The Guided and the Lost
by Bird of Poetry
Summary: When Visser Three develops his most dangerous weapon yet, the war takes a disturbing new turn, and the Animorphs will need to rely on their allies more than ever. Part 16 of my Dæmorphing series.
1. Chapter 1

I was following Mrs. Chapman through the city in the afternoon when I saw a snake acting in a way snakes don't.

It was in a dingy little side alley. I might not have paid attention to it at all if it weren't blue with an orange belly. _An escaped pet,_ El thought, but then she said, _Why is it trying to wrap itself in that handkerchief?_

A real snake wouldn't want to wrap itself in cloth. It wouldn't be able to slither properly. I landed on a cornice of a nearby church and watched the snake. It had draped a dirty, dark red handkerchief over itself, and it kept rubbing into the cloth and flicking its tongue over it, like a little kid settling under a security blanket. I flew over the ledge of a tall building overlooking the alley to get a closer look.

The snake noticed my shadow fall over it. It froze. In a tiny voice, it said, "Oh God. God, please, don't eat me."

 _No,_ El whispered. But there was no escaping the truth. The snake hadn't used thought-speech. It wasn't a snake or a morph. It was a dæmon. With no human anywhere near.

My heart beat a frantic rhythm against my breastbone. If I'd been human, I would have thrown up. I would have clutched El tight enough to crush her. But the hawk didn't care. It just saw something prey-shaped that was not quite prey.

«Where is the rest of you?» El said.

"I don't know," said the dæmon, in its frayed little thread of a voice. "Underground. A basement. That's where they kept us. That's where I got out from."

 _Severed._ I thought of social studies class, learning about World War II, the atrocities committed by the Third Reich. _Never again,_ the textbook had said. Elhariel said, «Who did this to you?»

"Monsters," the dæmon whispered, burying its face in the handkerchief. "People-shaped monsters. Centipede monsters. Monsters covered in knives."

 _Yeerks,_ I thought, paralyzed, horrified. _The Yeerks are severing people._

«Where?» El said. «Where are they doing this?»

"I don't know. Underground. I don't know. I'll never find Harry again." The dæmon twisted itself around the handkerchief and shivered.

Just then, I finally recognized her. It was like recognizing a severed arm, horribly detached from its context. There was a homeless man who slept under the scaffolding of a construction site a few blocks down. He had a snake dæmon, less than a foot long, gray-blue with an orange belly. I was looking at all that was left of him.

El said gently, «What's your name?»

The snake dæmon's head came out from under the handkerchief. It must be all she had left of Harry: a scrap of cloth that still held the smell of him. "I used to be Imrau. Now I'm nothing."

«I won't leave you here, Imrau,» El said. «Where do you want me to take you?»

"You're a hawk," Imrau said. "Make me stop. Just make it quick."

«I'm going to stop those monsters,» El said. «I won't let them do this to anyone else. I promise.»

Imrau tasted the handkerchief with her tongue, one last time. "Thank you."

El swooped down from the building ledge. One hard squeeze of her talon was all she needed. After all, Imrau was such a small snake. When she dissolved into Rusakov particles, I hardly felt the change in weight at all.

I almost flew to Ax's scoop without thinking about it. But Ax wasn't who I wanted to see right now. He wouldn't understand the weight of this, the sight of a dæmon severed and alone. I needed to talk to a human. So I flew to Loren's house instead. A warm rain began to gust against my face. «Please, let me in,» I told her as I approached, and she opened the kitchen window at the back of the house.

I demorphed as soon as I got inside. Elhariel needed to be physical, real, herself. I held her to my chest as soon as I had hands. Loren rested her hand lightly on my shoulder. I realized she had been saying my name over and over, and looked up. Jaxom was close enough to my leg that my skin prickled that way it does when someone is close enough to touch. She said, "Can you tell me what happened?"

"Call a meeting," I said. "Get everyone over here."

Loren didn't move. She studied my face.

"I can only tell the story once," I said. "Call Jake."

Loren went to the phone. Remembering what it was like to kiss Rachel, I closed my eyes and pressed my lips to El's head. Her feathers were smooth and smelled like nothing. I felt a hand on my shoulder. "They're coming."

Loren made me hot chocolate, like she usually does for Ax when he visits. It was too warm for it, really, but I drank it anyway, overwhelming my tongue with its richness. I wondered how other people could drink it without tears springing to their eyes. It made my teeth ache with sweetness. Maybe only Ax and I could really appreciate it.

Rachel came into the kitchen by the back door, Abineng staying outside because the house was too cramped for him. The moment she saw me she said, "What's wrong, Tobias?"

I put down my empty mug and walked her to the living room. "Let's just sit down, okay? I just. Give me some time." We sat together on the armchair – it was a tight fit, but it was against the back wall of the house, closer to where Abineng was standing outside in the warm drizzle. Jake and Marco came in next, sitting on pillows on the floor with their dæmons in their laps, then Cassie and Ax took the couch.

"Are you ready?" Loren asked me.

I wasn't. But I told them the story, switching off with El when my throat wouldn't work anymore. The room went very quiet, except for the occasional hiss from Diamanta or outraged snort from Abi outside, loud enough to hear through the wall.

Rachel said, matter-of-factly, "We need to find this place, wherever they're doing this, and burn it down."

Cassie scraped tears from her face with her knuckles, and held Quincy against the pulse in her throat. "Breaking their hosts. Making them easier to control. That's what they're trying to do, isn't it."

Marco stared at Diamanta wrapped around his hands and wrists, then looked up. "We have to be careful. Andalite warriors wouldn't be as outraged about this as we are. If we don't do this right, they'll figure out we're human."

Rachel crossed her arms. "What are we supposed to do? Just let them keep… mutilating people? Like the Nazis did to – " She cut herself off. She didn't have to finish. It was her people, Jake's, who had been the victims of the Darmstadt Process.

"That's not what I'm saying," Marco insisted. "I'm saying we have to act like this is just another Yeerk facility we're taking down, not something we want to wipe off the face of the earth."

"Marco's right," Jake said. "If we go rushing in and burn the place down, the Yeerks will know they struck a nerve. Let's contact Eva and Aftran and find out what they know about it. And we'll keep patrolling the area where Tobias found Imrau, to see if we notice anything else. But Tobias?" I looked up from petting El. "Don't go alone, next time. None of us should have to face that by ourselves."

"How many more people?" Rachel bit out. "How many more people are going to be severed while we sit here and wait?"

I touched Rachel's forearm. "What happens if the Yeerks find out you're human?"

Rachel flinched. I pulled my hand back. El hopped up to my shoulder, leaned toward Rachel, and whispered, "We get it, okay? We have human family to lose, now." She gave Loren and Jax a significant look. Rachel nodded sharply.

"Marco and I will go talk to Bachu about what to ask Eva," Jake said.

"Ax and I can go patrolling around that part of town tomorrow," Loren said, not looking at me. I didn't argue. The thought of finding another severed dæmon in an alley made me sick.

Everyone left except Loren and Ax, bikes unchained from the house's back railing as everyone headed home through the rain. Ax stared at me with his human eyes, brown and liquid and warm like hot chocolate. "What you saw today has shaken you badly."

My hand tightened around El. "I guess it's not really the same for you. You see Andalites without Guide Trees and Guide Trees without Andalites all the time." I was almost used to seeing Ax in human morph without a dæmon, by now. But seeing a dæmon without a human was still unspeakable, corrupt, like a glitch in reality.

"Our bonds can tolerate distance in a way yours with your dæmons cannot," Ax agreed. "But the idea of severing that bond is just as repugnant to us. And separation from our Guide Trees still has its costs, in the long term."

"Costs?" said Loren. "What do you mean?"

"Traditionally," said Ax, "there are limits on how long an Andalite should spend distant from his _Garibah_. We have always been a nomadic people. But there is a timespan called the _galan maheet_ , equivalent to twenty-seven of your months, beyond which an Andalite should not go without visiting his Tree. The warning is repeated in many of our old stories."

"What happens if you stay away for longer than that?" I asked.

"Different stories give different warnings. Perhaps they are all true, or none are." Ax paused. "Difficulty empathizing with others. A kind of flattening of the personality: all the strongest traits exaggerated, losing the finer points. Loss of imagination. Memories losing their color and depth. Perhaps more I cannot remember."

"Ax," Loren said. "How long has it been since you were with Firi Dria?"

Ax blinked slowly, his eyes aimed firmly at the floor. "Twenty-eight of your months."

Jax started toward Ax, an instinct to comfort, but he stopped, because he had no dæmon to nuzzle. Loren reached out to Ax, slowly, giving him plenty of warning that the hand was coming to rest on his shoulder.

"Is there anything we can do?" I said quietly.

Ax said, "There are rituals that are meant to help. I do not know what else to do."

"There must be _something_ ," Loren said.

"The Hork-Bajir," I said. "They know more about _hrala_ than any of us. Maybe they'll know."

"I am not sure," Ax said. "But I am willing to try."

I wasn't sure how to explain it to Toby. She was already looking at me kind of strangely. «Ax is having some problems. With his _hrala_ , I guess.»

Toby tilted her head and peered at Ax, who shifted his weight uneasily from hoof to hoof. "I see. Do you know why?"

«Andalites have something that's kind of like our dæmons,» I said. «Part of their essence, their _hrala_ , in a separate place. They call them Guide Trees. And Ax has been away from his Guide Tree for a long time.»

"You're saying that part of his _hrala_ is on another planet," Toby said.

«Um. Yeah.»

"I'm going to have to bring in an expert," Toby said slowly. "By the way, Tobias, congratulations. You've been making a lot of _hrala_ lately."

«I – what?»

"Well, you and Ax started making more _hrala_ once you formed your family with Loren," Toby said, like it was no big deal. "Understanding and connection between people is a great producer of _hrala_. But you've been making even more the last few times I've seen you. Have you been making art? Keeping a journal? Connecting deeply with another person?"

If I'd been human, I would have flushed red all over. As a hawk, I was just struck silent. When Toby walked away to find her _hrala_ expert, Loren held out her arm for me to perch on and took me aside. "It's Rachel, isn't it?"

«I… uh… yes?»

"I hope you're using protection while you're making _hrala_ with Rachel," Loren said.

« _Mom_!» I hardly ever called her that, but if there was ever a time, it was now. «We're not – it's not _like_ that!» If anything, it probably had a lot more to do with me morphing Yoort and infesting her than it had to do with kissing and… more than kissing. It was what made me feel the most connected with Rachel, the most intimate. But there was no way I was going to tell my mom about that. Or anyone else.

"But if it _were_ like that," Loren insisted, "you would know what to do to stay safe, right?"

«We had sex ed in school! I know what condoms are,» I said, then instantly regretted saying the word 'condoms' to my mother.

Elgat Kar showed up just in time to rescue me from even more embarrassment. "Toby say Andalite friend have _hrala_ problem."

«Yes,» I said. «Can you help him?»

The Hork-Bajir healer walked a circle around Ax, who fidgeted from hoof to hoof. "Broken root," Elgat said.

«What do you mean?» I said.

Elgat pointed from Jaxom to Loren and back. "Root," she said. "Like tree in earth."

Elhariel said, «So it's like… a tree drawing up water from the earth? But with _hrala_ instead?»

Elgat seemed pleased. "Yes."

"So what can we do?" Loren said.

"Return to your earth," Elgat told Ax. "Be rooted."

«I cannot do that any more than you can return to yours,» Ax said, defensive.

"Only way to make better," Elgat said. "Other way is make less bad."

«I will accept 'less bad' if you can offer it.»

"Broken root," Elgat said. "Still need _hrala_. Like tree need water."

«You mean I need an alternate source,» Ax said, «since I don't have access to my Guide Tree.»

Elgat's eyes widened. "Andalite's root is tree? Not animal?"

«Humans have dæmons,» Ax said. «Andalites have Guide Trees.»

Elgat bent her head, extending out her forehead blades. "Andalite more like Hork-Bajir than Elgat know."

Ax hesitated, then tapped his tail against Elgat's forehead blades, a Hork-Bajir's greeting, blade to blade. «What can I do?»

"Find still place," Elgat said. " _Hrala_ move, like river. But some place not river. Pond."

«A place where the current does not pull my _hrala_ away,» Ax said.

"Yes. Stay in still place. Sleep in still place. Hork-Bajir can find."

«Perhaps Toby can come to my forest and help.»

"Yes." Elgat started circling Ax again. "Make _hrala_ in still place. Many _hrala_. Show Toby. Toby tell you what make most."

«Is Toby busy now?» I said. I wasn't in Hork-Bajir morph, but I could just imagine the _hrala_ leaking out of Ax, like blood from an open wound. I wanted to stitch it up, keep the life in him.

"Yes!" I heard Toby call through a stand of trees. "About to teach a lesson for the kids. Let's do this tomorrow morning, okay? I'll be at Ax's scoop."

 _One day,_ Elhariel said. _This can wait one day._

«Thank you,» I called back to her.

«Thank you,» Ax said to Elgat, gravely.

«How are the free Controllers doing?» I asked her.

Elgat gestured in the direction of the yurt where they were staying. "Go talk and see. Good to talk. Tell story."

"We'll let you know how Ax is doing," Loren told her, "next time we come back."

The free Peace Movement hosts were gathered around the fire pit by their yurt, sitting on logs. Rachel's Chee friend Lourdes was with them, and Elgat's sister Meret. They all looked up as we came. "Tobias!" Meret said, as happy as Hork-Bajir always are to see me.

«Hi, Meret,» I said. «Making friends with the humans?»

"Yes," said Meret. "Julissa tell story of how she meet her _dhalashi_."

Julissa, a big woman with a colorful snake dæmon, groaned, "For the last time, Meret. Jamal isn't my husband. We aren't married."

"Julissa love Jamal," Meret said. "Stay with Jamal. Help Jamal always. Jamal and Julissa have story together. Jamal is _dhalashi_."

"Humans don't think of marriage that way, Meret," Lourdes said. "Or at least, humans in this particular time and place don't. They see it differently. You should respect that."

"I thought the story was pretty cute," Melissa said.

I didn't know what to say to her. I had no idea how to talk to Melissa at all, after what she said to me and Rachel last time we spoke.

Loren sat on a log. I perched on it next to her. I could feel all the humans staring at me. They didn't know my story, didn't understand what I was.

They stared at Ax, too. Miguel, the boy who once shoved my head down a toilet, said, "You're an Andalite. Do you know when they're coming?"

Ax's tail sagged slowly toward the ground. His main eyes pointed well away. «No. I have no means to contact the Andalite fleet.»

"Are they going to kill all the Yeerks?" Miguel said.

«That will most likely be their plan,» Ax said.

Miguel snarled, tore a fistful of grass from its roots, and tossed into the fire. It flared for a moment, then settled.

Melissa said, "Is that what you want, too?"

«What?»

"To kill all the Yeerks."

Ax hesitated. «No. It is not what I want. But I will kill as many as it takes to win this war.»

And there were all chances at a friendly fireside chat killed. I was angry at Ax, but I didn't say anything to him. Instead, I said, «Ax and I come here a lot. We'll come visit when we're here. Say hi. You can ask us questions if you have them.»

"I have one," Robin said. "If it's not too rude. Why are you a hawk?"

I sighed. «Okay. Were you there the first time we attacked the Yeerk Pool?» Robin and Jamal nodded. The others didn't. «Well. We had no idea what we were doing, and…»

* * *

"I called you here because I have intelligence from Eva and Aftran about the dæmon-severing Tobias learned about," said the Chee called Bachu. We were in her house, with Tobias and I in our natural forms, since her holograms would ensure we could not be seen through the windows. "The transmission was in the form of a voice recording. Would you like me to play it back for you?"

Marco and Cassie leaned forward eagerly in their seats. "Yes," Marco said, his hand squeezing one of Diamanta's coils.

Bachu played back the recording. The voice of Marco's mother – though not necessarily Eva herself – said, "Report number four. August 1999, human time, Generation 699, late-cycle, Yeerk time. I have major news from a Council meeting with the Visserarchy. First, we've managed to re-establish ourselves with the Council of Thirteen, over Visser Three's protests. But more importantly, Visser Three's research team has been busy." The voice went very grim. "I know why he's been experimenting with intercision on humans. He told the Council he's worked out a way to sever the connection between Andalites and their Guide Trees, based on the Darmstadt Process developed by the Nazis. Visser Three says he's already tested the technology on his host, Alloran-Semitur-Corass, and it worked."

I flinched backward. Somewhere distant, I heard Loren and Tobias gasp. My hearts clenched. Firi Dria was safe. She must be, or else I would not be myself. I had been trained as an _aristh_ in how to survive long periods without my guide-tree, and the Hork-Bajir had instructed me further on how to conserve my _hrala_ in Firi Dria's absence. Yet I had never longed for my guide-tree so strongly as I did in that moment. If not for my discipline, I would have run out to carve a _shormitor_ into a tree, and left Bachu and her terrible message behind.

"I don't think there's much we can do to stop the intercisions on humans," Eva's voice continued. "The technology is already out there; we humans developed it fifty years ago. You can try to destroy the severance chamber – that's what Visser Three calls it – but I have to warn you, the Visser is expecting you to do just that. Maybe he didn't expect you to find out this soon, but he knows no Andalite could let this technology exist. So when you go after it, just know he'll be ready for you.

"I don't know where he's keeping the severance chamber, but I'm guessing it'll have to be large enough to hold an adult Andalite, and it'll need some serious power supply – it was enough of a money sink that Visser Three had to report it to the Council. Now, before I end this transmission, I have a request for you. I need you to pass along any blackmail you can get on Visser Three. The more I know, the more leverage I have on him. Eva and Aftran out."

Eva was correct. We would have to destroy this foul Yeerk invention and all of the data associated with it. But a bone-deep terror filled me at the thought of walking into the place where this severance chamber was kept. They would be waiting for us. What would happen if they caught me, dragged me into the chamber, trapped me inside and cut off my link to Firi Dria forever? I would be left as an empty shell of myself for Tobias and Loren to care for, if I managed to escape at all. Or I would be kept as a docile husk for some Yeerk to use as a host.

"Where the hell are they doing the intercisions on people?" Abineng exploded. "She didn't even tell us! Wherever it is, we need to burn it to the ground!"

"Hang on a minute," Cassie said. "I'm sorry if this is a sensitive subject, Ax, I really am. But can you tell us what a Guide Tree is?"

I kept only one eye on her, and looked pleadingly with my main eyes toward Tobias. I could not speak of my Guide Tree now, not to those who had no understanding of what it meant to me.

«Guide Trees are for Andalites kind of what dæmons are for us,» Tobias said. «Your other half. They're giant trees that can speak. But they can be far apart from each other. Obviously.»

Loren added, "Ax's Guide Tree is named Firi Dria."

A silence fell over the group. The dæmons looked surprised, ears pricking up, tails flicking. They watched me. They had not thought that I, too, might have a bond in _hrala_ to the planet that made me.

"So," Cassie said, holding Quincy down on her shoulder as if he might try to fly away, "you're saying Visser Three severed Alloran. Just like they severed the dæmon Tobias met."

«Yes,» I said quietly. «It is the same.»

Another silence fell, until Jake broke it. "I hate to say it, but we have to go after the severance chamber first. If we try to stop the dæmon intercision first, it'll be way too obvious we're human."

Rachel crossed her arms. "So maybe we're trying to stop their research on humans before it gets too far."

Marco looked at me sharply. "What do you say, Ax? You're the Andalite. What would you do?"

«Destroy it,» I said without hesitation. «Destroy the severance chamber. Save the humans after, if I can.»

Rachel shot me a disgusted look. I barely even felt it. Even the idea of the severance chamber was dangerous. I realized I didn't want my people to know about it. I wanted it to be gone before any other Andalite minds could be tainted with the knowledge.

Marco said, "See what I mean? We've had intercision for fifty years. The Andalites have never seen it before. If they find out the Yeerks are using it on Earth, they're gonna come down like a ton of bricks to stop it, and they won't care how many humans get hurt along the way."

Diamanta opened her mouth a little, showing a flash of fang. "If you think about it, it was actually really stupid of Visser Three to develop this technology. Not that he's a military genius or anything." She flicked her slitted eyes to Marco in a knowing look I could not read.

Jake turned to Bachu. "Do you know where the Yeerks could bring in enough power to juice this thing?"

" _Juice this thing_ ," Marco said, mimicking his voice. "You sound so action hero when you talk like that."

Bachu said, "I can narrow it down based on the power draw required by the Darmstadt Process."

"Don't call it that," Rachel spat. "Call it what it is. Intercision. Severing."

"Very well. Intercision. The other Chee and I will analyze the power grid and give you an answer."

The meeting dissolved. Cassie started doing her chores around the barn. Jake and Marco walked away, talking to each other in low, intense voices. Rachel took on the distant look of a private thought-speech conversation, then left on her own. Loren left the barn. Tobias and I morphed human and followed her into the woods. Loren took the walk to my still place.

I had to scrap my beloved old scoop and start afresh in the place Toby pointed out for me, a dip between two small hills where the soil was loamy with gathered moisture. It didn't feel any different to where I had been before, in any respect but the obvious physical ones, but Toby insisted that this was a place where _hrala_ pooled and became still. My scoop was still rudimentary compared to the previous one, but I had carved _shormitors_ honoring Firi Dria on the trees all around it.

Loren stopped at a _shormitor_ and traced it with her fingers. Jaxom looked up at me. He said, "Talk to me, Ax."

For a moment, the words dried up inside my mind. Then Tobias landed on my back, and with his weight, the anguish came pouring in. «Alloran,» I cried, heartsick. «He begged me to end his life. And now Visser Three has done far worse than kill him.»

Tobias's talons dug into my fur. «Ax. Ax, you were trying to be kind.»

«It doesn't matter that I tried,» I said. «It would have been kinder to kill him quickly with my blade. I tried, and all I have done is prolong his suffering with no hope of recovery.»

Loren was still tracing a _shormitor_ with her fingers. "This is the name of your _Garibah_ , isn't it?"

«Yes,» I said softly. Would I ever be reunited with Firi Dria? My Tree felt so distant, and so fragile.

"Alloran's was named Henga Sholeth," Loren said. "He had a holo of her on the _Jahar_."

Henga Sholeth. The life in it would go dormant, to the same sleeping mind as any other ancient tree in its forest, until the next baby Andalite laid at its roots awakened it. Or perhaps the violent severing of its Andalite half would kill it forever, blackening its roots in the soil. Henga Sholeth, who didn't even get to feel the moment when its Andalite died, its thoughts rotted away before it had time to wonder what had happened.

«It won't happen to you, Ax,» Tobias said. «We won't let it.»

«Of course not,» I said. «We will destroy it before they ever get the chance.» But still, it made my hearts beat less painfully, knowing that Tobias was afraid for me. It made me feel less of a coward for the terror pulsing through my body.

"You don't have to go at all," Loren said. "Maybe it would be safer if you didn't. This technology was designed to break you, not the rest of us."

«The severance chamber is based on your human 'Darmstadt Process,'» I said, more harshly than I intended. «None of us are truly safe.» My breath was heaving in my chest. «Promise me. Promise that if they do sever me from Firi Dria, somehow, that you will kill me. I will already be dead in any case, and that way the Yeerks cannot use what is left of me.»

«Same goes for me,» Tobias said. «Without Elhariel, I'm nothing.»

Loren said, "Suicide is a sin, according to my faith, even if you ask someone else to do it for you. So I won't ask you to do that for me. Just send me to the hospital to get care until I wither away on my own." She gathered Jaxom into her arms. "But I respect that you feel differently. I… I'll do it. Though I hope to God I never need to."

Jaxom reached out and traced my _shormitor_ with his snout. "How would I know this means Firi Dria? Can you show me how to read it?"

I knew what Jaxom was doing. I was supposed to create _hrala_ here in the still place, to replenish what I lost. Toby had determined that I generated the most _hrala_ when I created and connected in ways related to my Andalite culture. Connecting my culture to another was best of all. Perhaps Loren genuinely wanted to know how to read a _shormitor_. But she also wanted me to create _hrala_ , for the sake of my health.

I searched within myself and found that I wanted to teach her and Tobias both. «Very well.» I pointed at the tree with my blade. «The first stroke indicates my relationship to the subject…»

* * *

Three days later, I discovered another severed dæmon while patrolling the neighborhood where Tobias found Imrau. She was a frilled lizard, which I knew from my almanac to be from a continent nearly directly across the planet from this one. She was hiding in the shadow of a Dumpster. There were no humans in sight.

I perched in a tree on a street near the Dumpster. I asked the dæmon, gently, «Where is your human?»

"I don't know," she said, in a small voice. "Dark. Cool. Underground. Gone. Not with me."

«What is your name?» I asked, because if I was to witness her death, I ought to know.

"Fortale."

«Can you come out into the light, Fortale?» I said gently. «I wish to help you.»

Fortale hesitated, then emerged. She looked gray, not the natural gray that Earth lizards sometimes were, but a faded, ghastly gray. When I saw her, I was finally able to experience the horror the humans clearly felt about severed dæmons. I could see Firi Dria in my mind, her roots rotting in the ground, her leaves falling blackly from withered branches. My bird's heart hammered in my chest. No Andalite had ever imagined such a thing before. None of us had ever known such an abomination could be possible.

The Animorphs had been right. If my people found out, if they felt the heartsickness I felt, they would burn Earth to a cinder if it meant the severance technology could never be used again.

Fortale was dying, or perhaps in some way already dead. I knew the ritual for this. I could not forget, after reciting it over the bodies of my niece and nephew, laid at the roots of their neighboring Guide Trees.

«Would you like me to end your pain for you?» I asked, voice very soft.

"Yes," Fortale moaned. "Oh, God, please."

I seized her in my talons and carried her up to the roof of a nearby building. «To the water that gave birth to us,» I said. «To the grass that feeds us. To the freedom that unites us. We return to the earth. Freedom is our only cause. Duty to the people, our only guide. Reverence for all that lives, our sacred trust. Care for…» _Our Guide Trees and their soil,_ is what I would have said next to an Andalite. But now I had to say something different. «The care between human and dæmon, our most joyous vow. Fortale, I offer your life to the earth with open hearts.»

"Thank you," the dæmon whispered as my beak descended, and she dissolved into the breeze.

I was afraid. Not the normal fear of anticipating a battle, but a bone-deep terror that made me sick. It did not become a warrior, to feel this way.

In only three days, we were going to the place where they kept the severance chamber, which could be the end of me and Firi Dria both. I would master my terror, or it would master me.

* * *

The facility was in the new wing of the community center, supposedly "under construction." Contractors could be Controllers too, after all. It was finished on the outside, but through the high, narrow windows I could see that it was a mess of equipment on the inside.

 _We still should be attacking whatever place they're using to sever homeless people from their dæmons,_ Abineng grumbled at me as we flew toward the community center as flies. _They're mutilating people_ right now, _and they haven't even used the severance chamber on anyone but Visser Three's host._

 _What about Ax?_ I shot back. _We can't let them do that to him._

«They have really high security here for a construction site,» Tobias said. He had come to scout it out during the day. «There's a code to get into the new wing of the building. And the outside's really solid – metal doors, and those high windows – we can't just smash our way in. And I'm pretty sure those contractors wandering around and going in and out are really security guards.»

«So we'll hitch a ride on one of them,» Jake said. «Find a place to demorph inside.»

Easier said than done. Most people notice when flies land on them. One of the so-called contractors was wearing a backpack; I grabbed on and crawled into a side pocket.

«Everyone grabbed on?» Jake said.

We all checked in. We were good. I listened to the Controllers talk as they went. The guy I was riding on said, "Where's Akdor 212?"

"Called away. The Andalite bandits cut the power lines going to the facility out in the Dry Lands. Akdor and her crew were sent off to repair them."

We didn't do that. The free Hork-Bajir did, as a distraction from what we were doing. Just another favor Toby and her people had done for us.

"Is that facility even worth it with all these bandit raids?" my guy said.

"What do I know?" the other guy said. "I do like having Akdor around, though. She's the only one who isn't afraid of the Sub-Visser."

Someone punched in the key code at the door. «Did anyone see that?» Jake said.

«Sort of,» Marco said. «Four seven three… something.»

"I'll meet you for the next shift in a minute," my guy said. "I hate how these human hosts need to leak out of some orifice or another every hour."

«You live in a pool of sludge and you think _peeing_ is gross?» Marco said, outraged.

«Come on, the tall one is going to the bathroom, everyone latch on!» Jake said. «Don't let them notice you.»

«Aaaaahh!» Cassie cried.

«Are you okay, Cassie?» I said.

«I hopped to the tall guy's shoe. He stepped on me, kind of. I'm clinging to the arch of his shoe, in front of the heel. I need to demorph soon.»

We hopped off the guy while he was peeing, hoping he'd be distracted. Let me just say that I hope I never have to be that close to a urinal again.

«He's gone,» Jake said. «Let's demorph, fast.»

I saw Cassie's shattered fly body multiplied a hundred times in the lenses of my eyes. A year ago, I would have been terrified, frozen, pleading with Cassie to come back to me. A year ago, I was a different person. Now I knew she would make it, because she was _Cassie_ and she knew her body better than any of us, and the fear barely touched me.

«There's no way all our battle morphs are gonna fit in here,» Tobias said, shaking off the last of his fly morph. He was right. It was a pretty big public bathroom, but my elephant all on its own was going to be a tight fit.

"Then we space out the big morphs," Jake said. "Rachel, you go elephant first, and Tobias can be your eyes and tell you what you need to smash. Then Marco, Loren, Ax in polar bear morph, me, and Cassie as the rear guard."

I didn't like the idea of leaving the others behind, mid-morph and vulnerable. But I also wanted to smash up this awful place as soon as I could. So I focused on the strength of the elephant morph and lost myself in it.

It turned out I couldn't get all the way elephant in the space of the bathroom. So I made the door wider so I could get out into the hallway. _Well there's our cover blown,_ Abineng said wickedly. _Oh well!_

I heard cries and thumping footsteps as Hork-Bajir leapt into the hallway to stop me. As if they could. «This way!» Tobias cried, leading me through the bladed melee. I stampeded though them. There were still some at my back, but the others could deal with them. I had soul-destroying technology to stomp on.

More Hork-Bajir boiled into the hallway, coming out from behind every door. «Come on!» Tobias cried from up ahead. «I see this room down the hall – it's got all these wires and – »

But I couldn't keep up with him. There were too many of the enemy, slashing at my flanks, even trying to climb me like monkeys. I could hear the others fighting behind me but I couldn't afford to look back. Tobias circled back around toward me. «Chapman's up ahead. And another human-Controller I don't recognize. She – »

I saw her, dimly, up ahead. A girl just a little older than me, blonde, dressed in pink and blue, pulling a wheeled fish tank behind her. Through the screams of the Hork-Bajir and the roars of my friends, I heard her say, "That's all the bandits, isn't it, Chapman? Excellent." Then she held out her arm and sprayed a cloud of white gas down the hallway.

The Hork-Bajir screamed as it hit them. Tobias shrieked and crashed to the ground. «No! Tobias!» I shouted, and then it was on me, too, stinging my eyes and nose. «Look out! There's gas! Tobias is hurt, Jake, we have to help him!» I turned sideways in the hallway, trying to haul myself around, knocking gassed Hork-Bajir over like dominoes.

Too late. Marco was on the ground, twitching. Beyond him, Loren, Ax, and Jake lay like furry mountains. If Cassie was up, I couldn't see her through the gas. I was the only one standing.

 _We're an elephant,_ Abineng thought, numbly. _Too big for the gas to work._

«Rachel!» Cassie called to me. «Please tell me you're okay!»

«I… yeah, the gas didn't…» My thoughts were slow, too slow, but I was still in the fight. Somewhere in the background, I could hear the Controller girl talking to me, mocking me, but the words didn't come through.

«Rachel, we have to get out of here,» Cassie said. «I was too far back to get gassed. We're the only ones who can help them. Break down a wall and _get us out of here_!»

Break down a wall. Okay. I could do that. I was good at that. I crunched my way through a side door, widening it, and broke through. Nothing but a solid brick exterior wall and high, narrow windows. I turned and smashed into the next room. A gym, with a big door for bringing sports equipment in and out. I ran for the door. «Cassie! This way!»

The metal of the door bent and twisted around me. Brick crumbled and alarms went off. Any Controllers left standing after the gas would be coming after us any minute. I stampeded toward the woods, barely even noticing the obstacles in my way. I heard a crash and a moose bellow behind me. I wanted to turn back and help Cassie, but she said, «Keep going, Rachel! You've been Draconed. You're badly burned. You need to demorph.»

Was I? I couldn't even feel most of my body anymore. But Cassie wouldn't lie to me. As soon as I got under tree cover, Abineng pictured his horns and his stiff black mane, and the changes came. When I was human again, my heart jackhammered against my ribs, so hard I could practically feel my body vibrating. "We need to get them out," Abi said, rearing back on his hooves. "I can't think. I can't think. What do we do?"

There was a terrible racket through the trees. I dove behind a bush, while Abi snorted and stood his ground. «Rachel!» Cassie cried. «Are you here?»

Abi brayed in surprise, then settled down. "You scared the shit out of me."

I came out from behind the bushes as Cassie demorphed. I should have been able to come up with something to do. But I couldn't. When Jake was too screwed up over Tom to lead, Ax had talked about the chain of command. Whatever the chain of command was, Cassie was above me. I said, "Cassie. How are we going to get them out?"

The last of the fur melted away from Cassie's face. She was crouched on the ground, holding Quincy to her heart like a talisman, eyes closed.

"Cassie," I said. "They're going to use the severance chamber on them. We have to get them out."

Cassie's face tightened. The weight was settling on her, the same weight that Jake carried all the time, now. If only I could take it off her shoulders. "I'm going to go get help," she said. "But it might take a while. You're going to have to keep the Yeerks distracted. Delay them from using the severance chamber, and maybe give everyone chances to demorph."

"On it," I said. My heart was still thumping away, but there was also the thrill, the fire that made it all easy once it was lit. I'd have to get back in the building, if I was going to do this. I focused on the fly.

"But don't try to pull some kind of Lone Ranger rescue thing on your own," Cassie said. "You hear me? You can't do this alone."

"Okay," I said. "Prince Cassie."

"Oh, don't you dare!" But Cassie was smiling right up until her mouth pushed out and hardened into a beak.

«I could call you Princess Cassie instead,» I said. «Just like when we were in first grade.»

«Not in front of the others!»

«What, you don't want anyone to know you liked being a princess when we played pretend?»

«Then I'll just have to tell them that you always wanted to be a lady knight.»

A terrible sense of foreboding settled over me. Abi wondered, privately, if this might really be the end for Cassie and me, if everything would go wrong and we'd never see each other again. «Cassie?» I said. «You got this, okay? Let's do it.»

«Thank you,» she said, and we both flew away. It was a long journey for a fly back to the community center. It was time to find out where the Yeerks were keeping my friends.


	2. Chapter 2

When my brain came back online, I was inside a box, transparent, just four feet square, with some kind of panel with red and blue lights built into one wall. Beyond my cage was a big room full of machines and pipes and wires. The others were in boxes too, bigger ones to fit their size. But only four of them – Rachel and Cassie had gotten away. And there was the Controller who'd gassed us.

Through the glare of the spotlights on us, I could see her: tall and blonde and straight off an ad for the Gap. Like Rachel. Except that she had a clownfish dæmon fluttering through fake flowers in a tank by her side. She looked around at all of us and smiled like a shark. "Hello, Andalites. I'm Sub-Visser Fifty-One. Call me Taylor." She didn't introduce her dæmon. Either he didn't matter to the Yeerk, or the Yeerk thought he wouldn't matter to us. "I see you looking around your boxes. Don't bother. There's no way out."

«No! No! You cannot keep me here!» Ax roared and slammed a giant paw into the panel in the side of his box. He convulsed as an electric current went through him.

"Ouchie," Taylor said.

«Ax!» Loren said, not including Taylor in her thought-speech. «Are you all right?»

Ax groaned and sat down heavily on the floor of his box. «We must get out of here. We _must_. She will _break_ me!»

«No she won't,» I said. «We won't let her.»

"Tell me," Taylor said. "Which one of you is David?"

My brain froze up for a second. Then El reminded me, _The Yeerks don' t know we killed David. We still have seven "bandits," and they think David is one of us._

"You see," Taylor went on, "I'm supposed to give Visser Three a demonstration of the severance chamber, and he would be _so_ disappointed if I tried to sever a Guide Tree from a _human_."

I wasn't watching Taylor, though. I was watching Ax. He was hyperventilating, his furry chest pumping hard. «We have to stop her. Stop her. Stop her.»

«Jake,» I said privately. «Ax is losing it. What are we going to do?»

"We have no idea what the severance chamber will do to a human," Taylor said. "It could even kill you. So you'll be much better off if you tell me who you are, David."

«We will tell you nothing, Yeerk,» Jake said, putting on the cold, hard tones of an Andalite warrior. «Do you think we are so monstrous as to endanger a human child under our protection? But of course a Yeerk would never understand a soldier's honor.»

"What about you, David?" Taylor said. "Do you have a soldier's honor? Or are you just a kid who wants to see his parents again? We could make that happen, you know."

«David knows better than to believe in your empty promises,» Jake sneered.

«Jake? Tobias?» It was Rachel. Her voice was like a thunderbolt, starting up my heart again. «Marco? Ax? Loren? Are you here? Please answer me.»

«Rachel!» Jake and I said. Jake went on, «Rachel. We're in a big room with a bunch of machines and stuff. They have us trapped in these boxes. We can't get out. Where are you? Where's Cassie?»

«She's getting the cavalry,» Rachel said. «I'm here to keep Blondie's mind on other things.»

«Rachel, you've seen the kind of firepower she has,» Jake said. «Don't come charging in here.»

«Cassie and I already had that talk,» Rachel said. «She's good at it. I'm in the air ducts right now. It's, what, 90 degrees out today? I wonder if this machine will work if I shut down the cooling system.»

Elhariel laughed silently in pure relief. This was bad. Just about as bad as it had ever gotten. But Rachel was looking out for us, and that counted for a lot.

«Ax,» Jake said. «Tell her you're David.»

«What?»

«Ax, are you listening to me?» Jake said, slow and calm. «If Taylor thinks you're David, she won't put you in the severance chamber. She wants to use it on an Andalite. Can you do that?»

«Are you sure this is a good idea?» Marco said. «Ax isn't exactly great at passing for human.»

«I… I…» Ax said. Then publicly, he said, «It's me. I'm David.»

"How would you like to see your parents again, David?" Taylor said sweetly. Like an older sister or something.

«Filthy Yeerk!» Ax raged. «You'll never let me see my parents!»

 _He isn't acting,_ El realized. _He wants his parents. But he can't see them because of the Yeerks and this war._ My heart ached.

There was a loud _clunk_ from somewhere deep in the building. Taylor's lip curled. "Excuse me a moment, David. We'll continue this conversation soon." And she left the room, wheeling her tank behind her.

As soon as she left the room, Jake said, «Everyone, demorph! I don't know how long we were knocked out.»

I hadn't even thought of that. It wasn't a problem for me. But if Rachel hadn't been here to draw Taylor away, my friends could have so easily been trapped. While everyone else demorphed, I heard Rachel say, distantly, «Oh – bug spray – better – »

«Get out of there, Rachel!» I urged her. But she didn't respond. Whether it was because they'd gotten her or because she was out of thought-speak range, I couldn't know.

I saw Ax, demorphed, leaning against the side of his box like he needed it to stay upright. «Ax,» I told him. «You have to morph again. She has to think you're David.»

A shudder passed through Ax. Desperate for anything to help him, I tried _djafid_ , Andalite thought-speak emotion-singing. I'd never done it before, but Ax had shown me a few times. I wanted to sing hope, but I didn't have much myself, and I didn't know what I was doing. My thought-speech wavered and broke.

Then Elhariel dredged up the memory of Elfangor's _djafid_ , a million years ago at the construction site, when he sang courage to five frightened children. It was like when I was in Rachel's head as a Yoort and found just the right memory to bring up to make her feel right again. Elfangor was a thought-singer, sending out courage even when he was about to die, and I was his son. I could do it too.

I was still unsteady and – well, whatever you call being off-key in telepathy. But I kept going, shaping that memory of my father into a song of strength for his brother. But Ax's fur rippled from blue to white, and his face pushed out into a bear's snout.

When Loren was fully re-morphed, she gave me a long look with a huge dark bison eye. But she didn't say anything. She didn't need to. I knew how complicated it was for Loren whenever I reminded her of Elfangor.

Taylor came back five minutes later. "I have my troops scouring the building for your two friends. We should have them soon." She looked at Ax. "Don't you think it's about time you demorphed, David? It's been forty minutes since I knocked you out. You don't want to get trapped in morph, do you?"

Ax didn't say anything. That might have been for the best. The more he said, the more chances he had to trip up and give himself away.

"Hmmm," Taylor said. "You know, I really do believe you Andalites might care enough about your precious soldierly honor to make some misguided try at protecting this boy. So, David, if you want me to protect you and take you to your parents, you're going to have to demorph, or tell me your mother's maiden name."

Silence. None of us knew what it was. And the real David would know, of course.

«Guys. It's me. Rachel.» Sick relief crashed through me. «Are you okay?»

«Fine,» Jake said, but he sounded strained. «We could use another distraction.»

«Where are you?»

«We don't know,» Marco snapped.

«Try circling the building and talking to us,» I said. «When the thought-speech gets harder to hear, you'll know you're getting colder.»

«Okay. Keep talking. I can do that.»

"Oops," Taylor said. "Looks like we're back to square one. David, you really should just show me who you are. I don't want to kill you."

«No,» Jake said. «You just want to make him your slave.»

«Can you hear me now?» Rachel said.

«Yeah,» I told her, «but it's getting fainter.»

«Okay… back the other way…»

" _Someone_ is going to tell me who the human is," Taylor said. "Or I'm going to make you tell me."

«You can't make us tell you anything,» Jake said.

"No? I'm more persuasive than you think, Andalite." Taylor took a device out of her pocket. Dread prickled along my spine.

«Rachel?» I said.

«How about – -is way?»

«You're cutting out. Rachel, have you figured out where we are?»

«I think so.»

«Then get over – NO!»

Taylor pressed a button on the device. The red light in Jake's box blazed. He collapsed, rolled onto his back, and roared so loud the wires shook all around the room.

«RACHEL!» I screamed. «Help!»

«I'm coming!»

Jake's convulsions seemed to drag on forever. I couldn't look away, even though Elhariel kept begging me to. If someone spoke, I couldn't hear it over that terrible roar echoing in my ears and my mind. It kept echoing even after Jake went limp, the pain ended.

Taylor smirked. "That was the lowest setting. Anyone want to talk yet?"

Silence. Inside his box, Marco was shaking. «Jake?» he said, as gently as he'd spoken to his mother after she'd been freed. «Jake?» Then there were sudden screams of pain and anger from Hork-Bajir outside.

"Your friends are brave," Taylor said. "But they're stupid. Two of them will never win against twenty Hork-Bajir."

I hated to admit it, but Taylor was right. «Rachel, you can't risk yourself,» I said. «There's too many of them.»

«What did she do to Jake?» Rachel shot back, snarling. «I heard him!»

«Tell me you're all right first.» Ax's face was pressed against the side of his box, watching Jake as if his own life depended on him. He needed my help more than Rachel did. I felt torn in half, too many important thoughts fighting in my mind.

«I didn't do anything stupid,» Rachel said. «I just ran in as a skunk, sprayed a bunch of Hork-Bajir, and ran out.»

«Rachel, I need you to listen, because Ax needs me right now. Don't go on a rampage. You can't. But… Taylor tortured Jake.»

«WHAT?!» Rachel screamed. «I'll kill her! I'll kill her!»

 _This is exactly what we thought would happen,_ El said, despairing, but there was nothing else we could do.

"Who's next?" Taylor said. "You're the prince of this little group of bandits, aren't you, tiger? I can tell. You're responsible for these warriors. Maybe if I hurt one of them next, you'll talk."

Ax covered his face with his paw. I'd never seen him show fear like that before. «Ax, listen to me. Cassie's getting help. We're going to survive this.»

«I'm right here, sweetheart,» Loren said. «Talk to me.»

«Stop this,» Ax said. «Stop her. Stop her.»

I wished I could. Well. I could, couldn't I? I had an Andalite morph. Ax. If I morphed Andalite, she'd use me for her demonstration. Ax would be safe. No one else would have to be tortured.

 _What about me?_ El said, panicky. _What will happen to me?_

 _I don't know,_ I said. _Can you be brave for me, El? For Ax? Will you do this?_

 _Okay. Okay. For Ax._ And I focused on the grace, the rightness, of being an Andalite, and felt the changes begin.

" _Finally,_ " Taylor said. "You've made the right choice, Andalite." She beckoned to the Hork-Bajir warrior who had taken a post at the door. "Tell the Visser I'm ready for the demonstration."

«Tobias, no!» Loren cried. «You can't do this!»

«Yes, I can,» I said, trying to sound more calm than I felt. «I'm the only one of us with an Andalite morph. The severance chamber is built to sever Andalites from their Guide Trees. It won't work on me.»

«You don't know that,» Loren said. «She said it herself, it could kill you!»

«All I know is, my chances are better than Ax's. And I can't watch you get tortured. I can't.»

«Tobias,» Ax said. «I thank you for your courage. And I apologize for my cowardice.»

«You don't have to,» I said, and finished the morph. The Andalite optimism filled my head, and for just one moment, I thought everything might just be okay.

«Visser Three in human morph,» Rachel growled. «He's coming.»

That made the optimism fade, fast. I heard something groan overhead. I looked up with my stalk eyes. It looked like the glass covers we put over plants in science class to test whether plants needed carbon dioxide to live. Except it was connected to the ceiling with a thick black cable. It lowered from the ceiling and covered my box completely.

I felt Visser Three's presence, the sinister _djafid_ he always sang, even in morph. "Oh," he said. "The _child_ volunteered to be our test subject. How very noble of him. Should I speak the death ritual for you, Andalite?"

Suddenly, violently, I remembered that the Visser had severed Alloran. That he was speaking through the mouth of a broken host who couldn't even resist him in his thoughts anymore. It was like listening to a zombie or something. I recoiled from him.

"Do I disgust you?" he sneered. "I won't for long. I'll make you and your fellow bandits into tractable slaves, and then I'll do the same to the rest of your arrogant species. I'll make you all into host bodies for the Yeerks, nothing more, as you ought to be."

Visser Three turned to Taylor. "Activate the device."

* * *

I tried to sound confident, for Rachel's sake. But even as I flew away from the community center, I still wasn't sure where I should go for help.

 _Toby's free Hork-Bajir could do it,_ Quincy said. But Toby had made it clear that she didn't want to risk her people on our missions. Should I go to her and try to convince her to help?

 _Never mind,_ Quincy said. _How would they get here from the valley in time anyway? Uh… could Illim and the Peace Movement help?_

 _Outright violence against their own? I don't think they'd do it,_ I said.

 _Could the Chee help with their holograms?_ Quincy said.

 _Just me and Rachel and some holograms? I don't see how we could pull it off,_ I said. _Could Eva and Aftran help?_

 _Maybe,_ Quincy said, but he sounded excited. _Let's go find Bachu._

I flew to her house and perched in a tree in the backyard. «Bachu! Are you there? Come to the backyard if you're home.»

The back door opened. I shivered with relief. Bachu's hologram had her in cozy pajamas with a flower pattern. "Cassie? What's going on?"

«Can you call Eva and Aftran? Like, right now?»

"I can try," Bachu said. "But there's no guarantee they'll answer. They could be in the middle of something right now where they can't blow their cover."

«What if you flag it as urgent or something?»

Bachu's broad, friendly face went serious. "What's going on?"

«All the Animorphs except me and Rachel have been captured,» I said. «We were trying to destroy the severance chamber. The Yeerks might try to test the technology on them. We need to get them out!»

"Oh. Okay," Bachu said. She was so calm, like this was just another obstacle to find our way around. I latched onto that calm like a lifeline. "I'll flag the call as priority, then. Hopefully they can make their excuses if they're doing something right now." She closed her eyes. I waited, shifting from foot to foot on my branch. The minutes dragged on. I started to worry that they wouldn't pick up. Then Bachu said, "Sorry to interrupt. It really is important. Five of the Animorphs were captured while trying to destroy the severance chamber."

A pause. Bachu opened her eyes and looked at me. "How long ago?"

«I don't know. Half an hour? Forty minutes?»

Bachu closed her eyes again. Her mouth twitched. I wondered if I might actually vomit from fear. "All right," Bachu said. "I'll tell Cassie."

«What did they say?»

"They're going to try to pull some strings to ax the project immediately," Bachu said. "It's a bad move for the Yeerks anyway, they said, because it would attract far too much attention from the Andalites. If they get the go ahead from the Council of Thirteen, they'll send down troops to destroy the technology right away. That should be enough of a distraction for you and Rachel to get them out."

«Try?» I echoed. «If?»

"I'm sorry, Cassie. They weren't sure. But they were determined. Like they always are."

«Thank you, Bachu,» I said. «I have to go back. Rachel's trying to keep the Yeerks distracted, all by herself. She needs me.»

"Go," Bachu said. "I wish you the best."

I took off, and flew back to the place where my friends were fighting for their very souls.

* * *

«Garoff,» I said, flying my fingers across the communications dash. «That's the member of the Council most sympathetic to Edriss. He had better take this Three and his minions have Marco.»

«Visser Three and his minions have the Andalite bandits, but we wouldn't know that, would we, since we don't have any covert intelligence sources that can report that quickly,» Aftran corrected.

«Don't patronize me,» I snapped. The screen pulsed blue. «He's accepted the hail.»

«I didn't mean to patronize you,» Aftran said stiffly. «It was just a reminder.» When Garoff's host's scarred Hork-Bajir face came on screen, Aftran said aloud, my throat buzzing with her words, "Greetings, Councilor."

"I'm a busy Yeerk," Garoff said. "Tell me what you need."

"You know of Visser Three's latest gambit," Aftran said.

"I heard," Garoff said. "Some tool to make Andalites more tractable hosts."

"With respect, Councilor, I'm not sure you understand the implications of the technology," Aftran said. "The severance chamber is designed to sever Andalites from their Guide Trees. Once this connection is severed, they become like the walking dead, nearly mindless. Humans have developed a similar technology to use on one another, and they consider it despicable, its outcome worse than death. Andalites will react in much the same way. If they hear of it, it will draw their notice immediately."

Garoff weighed Aftran's words. "Draw the Andalite fleet to Earth, you mean."

"I think we agree that facing the Andalite fleet before we have enough military strength to meet it would be a disaster for us all," Aftran said. "And anyway, any self-respecting Yeerk should be able to control a host without any technological assistance. Perhaps Visser Three fears he's losing his grip."

"As usual, your hatred of Visser Three makes you overstep your bounds," Garoff growled. Which was exactly why Aftran had said it, I surmised. It wouldn't have been in character to speak of Visser Three without any personal attacks. "The _point_ , Visser One."

"I want permission from the Council to abort development of this technology immediately," Aftran said. "The longer it exists, the greater the risk the Andalites will learn of it. My Blue Bands can be deployed to Earth in a moment to destroy all traces of the research."

"You're right," Garoff said. "I share your concerns about Visser Three's current operations. But not all of my fellow Councilors agree. If I authorize this, some of them will be displeased with me."

I took over our side of the conversation. I leaned forward. "What do you want, Councilor Garoff?"

Garoff bared his teeth in a smile. "For some time, I have sought to come down more harshly on dissension in the Pools on Earth and its orbit. After the incident with the escaped hosts at the Grash Akdap Pool, I am especially concerned. It had to have been accomplished with collusion from Yeerks, and not just the treacherous fools who let their own hosts get away."

"I read the reports," I murmured. "Shocking that this could happen in our stronghold on Earth."

"Your espionage and infiltration skills are unparalleled in the Yeerk Empire," Garoff said. "Deploy your agents in the Pools, both orbitside and planetside. Find out what our people are talking about, and enforce bans on seditious activity. Find the traitors and execute them publicly."

I felt a rush of sick panic from Aftran. These were her people, the Peace Movement, Garoff was talking about. «I'm sorry, Aftran,» I thought. «We can't afford to refuse now. It'll only make him suspicious. We'll figure out what to do after this crisis has passed.»

For a moment, I wondered if she would take over, try to backtrack, leave my son in mortal peril. But she let me say to Garoff, "We have a deal."

* * *

I wanted to tell Jake that Tobias was going to be okay, that he hadn't just walked into a goddamn death trap. But we were all in a death trap, and I had no idea how any of us were going to get out of this.

There was an electrical hum, loud enough that my box vibrated a little with it. I watched Tobias, who looked exactly like Ax. He flinched as if he'd been, well, struck by lightning. His blue fur stood on end. He didn't drop dead.

«Well, Visser,» Tobias said, trying to sound high and mighty but not really making it. «It seems your device doesn't work after all.»

I started breathing again. Ax and Loren shuddered with relief. Visser Three turned on Taylor and snarled, "This device is supposed to be fully operational! What have you done?"

"Visser," Taylor said, not looking much like the prom queen anymore, "the technicians assured me that – "

"The technicians will be executed," Visser Three spat. "Be thankful I don't kill you as well." He gestured angrily at us. "Find out where the rest of the bandits are. Make them demorph. I will send my people from the Pool with loyal Yeerks to infest the lot of them."

That was when Rachel came back on the scene. «Guys, Cassie's back.»

Cassie said, «I went to Bachu and had her call Eva and Aftran. They're going to try to send Blue Bands down to trash this place. We'll get you out of here in the chaos.»

«If Taylor doesn't torture or infest us all first,» I shot back.

«Torture?!» Cassie cried.

«Yeah. She did it to Jake, and now she's going to keep on doing it unless we stop her,» I snapped. «So if you could come up with something to stop her, that would be awesome.»

Radio silence. Maybe Cassie needed time to deal with it. I was used to doing what I had to do even when I couldn't deal with anything. Visser Three was leaving. I had to come up with some way to stall Taylor until Rachel and Cassie got their act together. She was looking _pissed_.

"How long have you been in morph, Andalites?" Taylor purred. "The clock is ticking. Don't you think it's time to demorph?"

«What's wrong, Yeerk?» Jake said. «Are you worried we will be trapped in morph before your fellow slugs can infest us? How far away is the nearest Yeerk Pool entrance? How long until our bodies become significantly less useful to you?»

Hatred flared in Taylor's eyes, hard and flat as glass. This was a Yeerk not really in control of herself. I ought to know. I lose control of myself, too. Her free hand, not clutching the control for the torture devices we were trapped in, clenched and unclenched in the folds of her pleated skirt. "You fools. You think I can't break you apart? I _will_."

Okay, scary villain line, definitely time to say something distracting and Marco-ish. I said, «You're pretty.»

«Marco?» said Tobias. «What the hell are you doing?» Like I wasn't already half-convinced I was going to get us all killed.

«Distracting her! You got a better idea?»

Taylor turned to me. A smile crept across her face. "Oh. So finally the truth comes out. _You're_ the human boy. Yes, David. I am pretty." Her free hand crept up to touch her face, dream-like. "There was a time when I… this body… was the prettiest and most popular girl in her school. When I had a party, everyone…"

 _Cross-talk,_ Diamanta pointed out. _Bleed-through between Yeerk and host. She can't keep herself separate. Like Illim and Tidwell. Or Aftran and Cassie, sometimes._

«Careful, Sub-Visser,» I said. «You're starting to sound like a traitor. Like one of those Yeerks who like their hosts too much.»

"A traitor?" Taylor snarled. "I'm a voluntary! This girl, this human, chose this life, chose to invite me in to take control! And if you understood anything, David, you would do the same!"

«Marco,» Tobias said, deadly calm. «You're making her mad.»

«She's not torturing anyone, so I'm gonna call it a win,» I shot back. He really _wasn't helping_ right now. To Taylor, I said, «What don't I understand?»

Taylor walked up to my cube, pulling the wheeled tank with her clownfish dæmon behind her, and told me. She told me the story of how she used to be the queen of her school, until her house burned down and ruined her arms, her face. How she let a Yeerk into her head with the promise she'd be fixed, that one day she'd be queen again. How she betrayed her parents, sold them as valuable hosts to the Yeerks, all so she could go on being beautiful and proud and savage.

«And how are the Yeerks supposed to help _me_ , exactly?» I sneered. «I never got burned up in a fire. I've never been popular at school. I'm just a kid. How is letting a Yeerk into my head gonna make _my_ life any better?»

Taylor pressed her artificial hand against my box. Through the reinforced glass, I could see she didn't have fingerprints. Her dæmon pressed himself against the glass of his own tank, bright orange in the gunmetal gray of the room. "I could be your ally, David. Your friend."

«I could have a pretty girl as my friend? Is that what you're saying?»

"A powerful girl," she breathed against the glass. For a second my brain fuzzed out, maybe just from pure overload from the creeps, and it looked as if she were the one inside a tank, like her dæmon, instead of me.

The moment passed. Taylor was creepy. But under the Yeerk's control was a teenage girl, and if there was anything I knew, it was how to annoy a teenage girl. «Eh. I think I'd rather have the Andalites as my friends. Did you know they actually have a sense of humor? It just takes a little while to draw it out. Definitely better company than a Yeerk.»

Taylor's face twisted. She jabbed the control for the torture devices again. The red light in Jake's box came on again. «No,» I moaned. She must have seen my reaction when Jake was tortured the first time. She knew it would hurt me, seeing him twist on the floor, groaning pitifully as if he were bleeding out. (I knew what he sounded like when he was bleeding out.) «No, no, _Jake…_ » I needed him. I needed him. I was fucking it all up without him and I needed him _back_.

Then Jake stopped struggling, and all the power in the building went out.

" _Fuck_ ," Taylor said. I could barely see her, with the lights out over us. "Again?" She actually stamped her foot. "No. No! Your friends aren't coming for you, Andalites. And even if they do, there'll be nothing left of you! NOTHING!" And she mashed the control in her hands like she didn't care which of us got hit.

The red light in my box flared, blindingly bright in the dark. An electric current hummed. I braced myself for the pain. But it didn't come. Instead, my brain went somewhere else.

" _Hey, Dad, I'm home," I announced, slinging my backpack off my shoulder. I didn't expect him to answer with more than a grunt, but Diamanta became a spider monkey and went into the living room to check on him._

 _She came back and said, "He's not there."_

 _I went to his bedroom door and knocked. "Dad? I'm home!" No answer. Dia pointed to the bathroom door. It was slightly ajar. I pushed it inward with my fingertips._

 _Dad was passed out on the floor, a drool puddle next to his cheek on the tile. Mirazai was out of her tank, draped dry over my dad's side like something that washed up on the beach. The sour smell of vomit rose from the toilet bowl. I almost threw up myself. Dia turned and walked away. Distantly I heard the bedroom door swing open, the beeps of a number being dialed._

 _He'd done this to himself. There were two empty pill bottles next to the sink. He was so sad about Mom dying he couldn't live with it anymore. I was sad, too. All the time. It was going to happen to me next. The sadness had eaten my dad and now it was going to eat me, too._

«No! Nooooo!»

It took me a second to realize that it wasn't me screaming. It was Loren. We'd all been hit. Yeah, that was the word. Hit. A punch to the heart. I wanted to check on Jake, but he was just a vague shape in the huge dim room.

 _This is fucked,_ Dia said. _This is completely fucked. What is she going to do next? Turn us inside out? What can't she do?_

I realized that if I were in my human body I'd be having a panic attack. But the gorilla brain didn't know or care about the memory of my dad trying to kill himself. The gorilla brain was a weight, keeping me here. Not calm, but here.

«Heads up!» Rachel said. «The Blue Bands are coming!»

«Okay,» Tobias said shakily. «When are you going to bust us out of here?»

«It's probably going to be a fight between Visser Three's people and Visser One's,» Cassie said. «We'll use the confusion to break you out.»

«Into the middle of a Yeerk firefight?» I said. «Jake, are you listening to this insane plan?»

«Yeah,» said Jake. He sounded distracted, far away. «Sure. Fine.»

Fuck. I'd broken him, and Cassie was going to kill me. No, worse, she was going to be _sorry_ for me. «Jake,» I said privately, keeping a weather eye on Taylor as she gloated over us in our defeated little heaps of sad fur. «Buddy. Can you be prince right now, or not? You can say no.»

«I… um…»

«Guys, Jake is, uh, not available right now,» I told the others. «I'm taking the chains of commanding or whatever Ax calls it. Rachel, Cassie, the only way we're getting out of these boxes is if you smash them up. Come in as elephants and charge right at us. I'm guessing they're not built for a full-on elephant stampede.»

Diamanta added, «It's not my job anymore, so someone please tell me that plan is insane and we're all gonna die.»

Tobias said, «That plan is insane and we're all gonna – »

There were suddenly horrifying reptilian screams, like the dinosaurs made when we went on our little Magic School Bus trip to the Cretaceous. The door to Taylor's torture lair shattered as one of Visser One's giant Blue Band Hork-Bajir took one of Taylor's Hork-Bajir down in a flying tackle. The Blue Band got up, not even breathing hard, and turned to Taylor. Behind him, I could hear the sounds of Hork-Bajir on Hork-Bajir battle past the door. More Blue Bands came through, some bleeding from slash marks, some with smoking Dracon wounds. Taylor bared her teeth at them, as if she were a bladed monster herself.

My mom had come through. She sent the Blue Bands to save us. To save _me_.

The first Blue Band said, "This operation is shut down, on the order of Visser One."

"Not on your life," Taylor hissed. "I will _not_ let you undo what we've built here." And for the second time she fired the white numbing gas from her artificial arm.

It didn't touch me or the other Animorphs in our boxes. But I heard heavy thumps as the Blue Bands fell one by one, invisible in the darkness and the clouds of gas. They called out warnings to their fellows beyond the door. Taylor had held them off, for now, but more were coming. The gas was already thinning out when more Blue Bands came stampeding in.

Taylor fired the gas again, but less came out this time. More of her troops came through the door. Everything became a churning melee of numbing gas, blades, and Dracon fire.

Then there was a sound like thunder coming from beyond the door, and Rachel and Cassie came charging in.

They plowed through the battle like Godzilla through Tokyo. I couldn't believe how fast they were going. There was no way our little torture boxes could stand up to that onslaught. The problem was, I'm not sure my gorilla body could stand up to it either. «Aaaahhhhh!» I screamed, just as one of the elephants hit me like an oncoming train.

The glass all around me shattered as the box went soaring into the air. I curled up and covered my head with my arms, trying to shield myself from the flying glass. A hundred sparks of pain flared all over my body as the glass opened my skin, then the ground hit my back like a hammer blow. Stars exploded behind my eyelids. Screams, Dracon pulses, and breaking glass pounded at my ears and my aching head.

«No, Rachel!» Tobias cried. «Don't go back there! That's the wrong way!»

«After what she did to you?» Rachel raged. «I'm not leaving here until Taylor's dead.»

«Go, go, go!» Cassie shouted at the rest of us. I wanted to go. I really did. I just couldn't remember how my legs worked. Cassie came up to me. «Marco? Come on, Marco, we gotta go.»

«Don't be her,» Tobias begged, somewhere I couldn't see. «Be Rachel.»

Cassie's trunk wrapped tight around my middle and hoisted me up. The pressure on my battered body almost made me black out with the pain. I started to demorph; it was too dark in here for the Yeerks to see anyway.

TSEEEWWW! Another pulse of Dracon fire, too close, and Cassie screamed in pain. «Tobias, Ax, morph faster! We've gotta get out of here!»

Cassie ran. Every step jostled me in her grip and made me moan in agony. I demorphed faster, and my bones knitted back together. When she appeared, Diamanta wrapped around my neck three times like the world's heaviest scarf. Human again, my mind blurred with exhaustion, but I couldn't make Cassie carry me forever. I started the morph to osprey. When Cassie crashed outside through an already half-broken wall, I was a half-formed feathery lump in the curl of her trunk. I went weak with relief when I saw the others: Tobias overhead in hawk morph, Ax a blue blur running toward the forest, Rachel crashing along behind Cassie, and Loren and Jake still in their battle morphs, bleeding from glass cuts but moving fast. I didn't look back to see if anyone was following us. There was nothing we could do about it anyway.

Fully morphed to osprey, I flew behind Cassie into the woods, ducking bursts of Dracon fire the whole way. When we were really under tree cover, Loren and Jake collapsed, breathing hard. «Demorph,» I told them, perching on a branch overhead. «Come on, come on, you're bleeding, demorph.»

Cassie, Rachel, Loren, and Jake all shrank down into their own bodies. _We made it,_ Dia said. _We're safe. Maybe we're not so bad at being prince after all, huh?_

 _Maybe,_ I thought. _It still sucks, though. Jake can have it back as soon as he's…_ I looked down at him, his long black claws retracting into pale half-moons. _Whatever he needs to be, to be the leader again._

As much as we all wanted to get the hell out of there, we couldn't do it as a gaggle of seven raptors. Rachel and Tobias left together, then Loren and Ax. Jake was still in some kind of fog. Cassie talked him through his morph to peregrine, and I wondered if they needed or wanted me there at all. Cassie and Jake had some kind of thing going on, even if I didn't know exactly what it was. I should definitely leave. Any minute now.

 _But we don't know if Jake's gonna be okay yet,_ Dia said. _We can't leave until we know for sure, right? Isn't that the leaderly thing to do?_

When Jake was fully peregrine, I got ready to tell them I was going home. But Cassie said, «Hey, Jake, it's gonna be okay. Me and Marco are gonna take you home. We'll stay with you as long as you need us.»

«Uh huh,» Jake said, still so vague when he was always _right there_ and five steps ahead of anyone else. «Sounds good.» There was no way I could back out after that, so I flew honor guard with Cassie to a park at the end of Jake's street we usually demorph in when we're headed to his place. All three of us were swaying on our feet by then. Too many morphs, too much fear. He half-leaned on Merlyse, in reindeer shape, the rest of the way home.

When we got close, Quincy flew ahead a little to check in through the windows. "Steve's asleep," he said when he got back. "Jean's still up reading downstairs."

"It's late, but not late enough she'll get mad," I decided. Though maybe the rules were different, now that she thought Tom was dead. We went in through the back door, which the Berensons never locked. "Hey, Jean," I called to her, so it wouldn't look like we had something to hide.

"So that's where Jake's been," Jean said. When we crossed the living room to the stairs, she was up, her book closed on the coffee table. "Oh. And Cassie too. Are you all right, honey?"

Yeah. We weren't getting away from that one. No mom would be able to miss that Jake looked like hell. But he had pretty good reasons.

"We were helping Cassie at the barn," I said. _Distracting Jake,_ I mouthed at Jean, my face turned away so he couldn't see. Jean mouthed back, _thank_ _you._ "We're pretty beat. It's hard work out there. I think I got more exercise than I did in the last three years combined."

"Then Cassie's a good influence," Jean said. "You always did like video games better than playing outside." Her salamander dæmon added, "Congratulations again on settling, Diamanta. The form suits you."

"Thank you," Dia said.

"'Night, Mom," Jake mumbled. I realized Merlyse had been staring at Jean with huge snowy owl eyes.

"Night, honey," Jean said. "Don't keep him up, you two. I can see he's had a hard day. If I still hear you up there after eleven I'm sending you home."

At the top of the stairs, there were four doors. One led to the master bedroom, one to the bathroom, one to Jake's room, and one to Tom's. The door to Tom's was closed. They'd cleared it out already. Jake managed to save some things to bring to Tom in the Hork-Bajir valley. Only his bedding and posters were left, a reminder of who used to live there. Just like some of my mom's stuff had still lingered around the house, before Dad and I had to move.

Jake collapsed on his bed as soon as we closed the door, Merlyse curled against his chest in lynx form. But he didn't close his eyes, just stared up at the ceiling with his arms folded over Merl.

Dia's scales slid over my shoulder as she shifted to look at Quincy. I stared down at Jake and waited for Cassie to do something Cassie-ish that would fix this. Dia hissed in my ear, "She's going to cry. Do something, quick, before she cries."

I had no good ideas, but anything would be better than Cassie crying. I asked Jake, "What do you do to get to sleep?" All of us had to have something. It was never easy to fall asleep anymore. When I go to bed, Dia wraps around my chest, and I think of a song, and she squeezes me in time to the beat as it plays over and over in my head until I finally fall asleep.

Jake took so long to answer I wondered if maybe he'd fallen asleep with his eyes open. Finally he said, "Read a book. A history book."

I looked at the night table and saw a book about naval battles in the Napoleonic war or something. Quincy nipped the back of Cassie's hand with his fangs. She swallowed hard and pulled herself together. She pulled up the chair from Jake's desk and sat down. "Okay," she said. "I have some history for you. The barn's been in my mom's family for generations. Let me tell you about it. See, her ancestors were here before California was a state. They were a _mestizo_ family from Mexico who built a ranch up here."

I stood there awkwardly, listening even though I always found history kind of boring. I wondered again if I should leave. But Cassie gestured for me to sit at the foot of Jake's bed. I sat down, feeling weird about it even though I'd had sleepovers in this room a million times before. No sleepovers where Jake was just staring at the ceiling with Merlyse lying on him like a lump, though.

Except he wasn't staring at the ceiling anymore. He was asleep, eyes closed, breathing steady. Dia slithered off me and wrapped around a back leg of Cassie's chair. Cassie held her hand with Quincy on it to the side of the chair. I slipped into four-eye and heard Quincy whisper to Dia, "What about you?"

"What about me?" Dia whispered back.

Quincy said softly, "I heard you screaming too."

Dia flicked her tongue. I wasn't sure there was any real way to answer that. But she said, "Those boxes. They were tuned into our brains or something. It showed me my worst memory."

She didn't ask me what I saw. I was glad. Only Jake knew my dad tried to kill himself after my mom's death, and I only told him because I had to stay with him while my dad was in the hospital. There are some things not even Cassie can get me to talk about. Quincy whispered, "What do you think Jake saw?"

"Steve and Tom falling into the lake, maybe," Dia whispered back. "Or maybe seeing Tom in his cage at the Yeerk pool, that first time."

Quincy didn't ask her how she knew. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't give me that crap," Dia whispered. "You got Mom to send those Blue Bands. That was exactly what we needed. What I needed."

"Still," Quincy said. "You don't have to go home alone."

We turned off the lights and went downstairs. Jean put down her book again, when she saw us. "How is he?" she said softly.

For a second, I thought she was worrying about the same things I was. Whether he'd have nightmares about being tortured. If he'd still be _Jake_ after this. But she wasn't, of course. She thought he was broken up over Tom. Just like she was.

"It's hard on him," Cassie said. "But we try to keep his mind on other things. And we're there for him, whenever he needs us. You know that, right?"

"Of course," Jean said. "Jake couldn't ask for better friends."

I felt a little sick. Yeah, we were there for Jake. Duh. But we also went with Jake into hell, all the time. We were his friends. We were also his soldiers.

We said goodnight and walked to my house. We didn't say anything. Maybe both of us were still at Jake's bedside, in our heads. I know I was. But Cassie was right, as she was way more often than I'd ever admit. It was better not to have to go home alone.

"He'll be back," Cassie said, on my front step. "He's Jake. He'll come back from this."

"What if he thinks he deserves this?" I blurted out. "Because of – because of what he did to Chapman."

Cassie bit her lip. "He probably does. But if he didn't feel guilty like that – that's what would make me really worry."

I nodded. Then I went to my bed, and whatever nightmares were waiting for me.


	3. Chapter 3

**Ax**

I now understood why Marco frequently expressed the desire to go home and "veg out" in front of the TV after a mission. The day after our capture and torture by the Yeerks, I fed, performed the morning ritual, then stood in front of the TV in my scoop and did not move for hours. I usually do not understand the meanings in These Messages or why the young and the restless are arguing with one another, but there are patterns in the music and the way the camera moves from one face to another, as soothing in their way as the patterns Andalite gardeners sweep into drifts of fallen leaves.

As the sun passed its zenith, the soap operas ended, and the channel changed to a news program in between These Messages. I did not care about human news. I changed the channel. The television program was of the type humans called "science fiction." All of the so-called aliens were humans with cleverly applied makeup. Perhaps it is the inevitable for the limited minds of the pre-contact civilization to imagine aliens like themselves, I mused. Before we left our own world, Andalites imagined aliens that were much like us, but with four stalk eyes instead of two, or green fur, or as scavengers with sucking, toothed hooves.

«Watching Star Trek?» I said Tobias. I startled. I hadn't noticed him fly in.

«Your visual effects in your entertainments are laughably primitive,» I said. «I like this Spock character, however. He has an admirable ability to set aside his emotions.»

I tracked Loren's prairie falcon morph with a stalk eye as she landed in my scoop. «Of course you'd want to be a Vulcan,» Loren said. «Elfangor was always jealous of him, too.»

«Spock does have feelings, though,» Tobias said, perching atop my television. «He just controls them with his Vulcan meditation and stuff.»

I knew they were trying to draw me into a conversation that I almost certainly did not want to have. Probably I could not resist it for long, but I would not encourage it either. Loren demorphed. "I had a nightmare last night," she said. Clouds rolled overhead in the brisk wind, casting us in waves of light and shadow. "We were back at your old scoop. But you were still in that box. No matter where you went, the box came with you, like a force field or something. You didn't even seem to notice it was there, even when I beat it with my fists and tried to break you out."

«Andalites do not remember their dreams,» I said, «though brain scans indicate that we do have them.»

«Then these things just come back to bite you when you're awake, I guess,» Tobias said.

«Nothing is biting me,» I said.

«Yup,» said Tobias. «That's why you want to be Spock so badly. Because you have no emotions overwhelming you ar anything.»

«Very well,» I snapped. «I am afraid. Though that should be no surprise to you, given my shameful display yesterday.»

«What 'shameful display'?» Tobias said. «The part where you walked into a room that had a machine that could destroy your soul? The part where you managed to run away fast enough you didn't get hurt?»

«The part where I was cowardly before the enemy,» I replied.

«Well, you weren't a coward, so if you want me to be the voice of your conscience and beat you up about it, you're gonna have to find somebody else for that job,» Tobias said.

Loren flashed a smile at Tobias. "And if you want to do beat _yourself_ up about it, we're going to distract you so much that you can't. So you might as well give up now."

«How do you propose to do that?» I had been trying with the television all day.

«We're going to the Hork-Bajir valley,» Tobias said. «I think that machine might have done something to my _hrala_. Kind of like what's going on with yours. I'm getting a _hrala_ check-up. You could use one too.»

I had not considered that Tobias might have experienced side effects from the severance chamber, even if it had not succeeded in severing Elhariel. I had been selfish, thinking only of my own regrets. «Of course I will accompany you,» I said, and turned my mind to my northern harrier morph.

Tobias often speaks of the thrill of flight. It has never lost its appeal, even after nearly two years as a hawk. The effect on me is similar. The freedom of flight may have been an illusion, but it was an effective one. My problems seemed very distant from my vantage point in the sky.

Swooping down into the valley, I could see the small settlements where Tom and the former voluntary human-Controllers lived. They seemed to be adjusting, though I had no desire to speak to the former voluntary hosts. They unnerved me. One of them realized that we were not true raptors, and waved at us in recognition.

Elgat Kar came to greet us. "Andalite and human friends," she said, before Loren and I were demorphed. It must be relatively simple for a Hork-Bajir knowledgeable about _hrala_ to recognize individuals in morph. A point to remember at a later date. She added, "Tobias is hurt. _Hrala_ -sick, like Andalite."

"Sick how?" Loren said. "What can we do?"

Elgat climbed the nearest tree in a few deft leaps. "Toby!" she called.

Toby came in swinging through the trees. "Yes, Elgat?" She looked at us. "Hello."

Elgat spoke to Toby in guttural Hork-Bajir language. By the time my translator chip began to make sense of it, the conversation was over. Toby turned to us and said, "Elgat wants you to know that Tobias has a temporary, acute version of Ax's chronic condition. To put it in medical terms. While Ax must constantly manage his _hrala_ flow to minimize leakage, Tobias can expect his to heal on its own if he takes some time to rest and focus on _hrala_ -generating activities. May I suggest going to visit our human guests in the valley? Forming new connections is always a strong choice."

"That's a great idea, thank you, Toby," Loren said.

"How Tobias hurt?" Elgat said, tilting her head at Tobias.

Tobias said, «The Yeerks made a weapon to cut Andalites away from their Guide Trees. Their anchors. I made sure they tested the weapon on me, so they would think it didn't work. It hurt me, yeah, but it would have done worse to Ax.»

Elgat and Toby flinched back in shock. "Evil," Elgat said. "Worse evil than making slave. Slave can one day be free. Break Andalite from anchor, Andalite broken. Never whole."

"Yes," Loren said. "And the Yeerks are doing the same thing to humans. Severing them from their dæmons."

"Tobias and friends will help, yes?" Elgat said.

«We will,» Tobias said. «Toby, Jake's been meaning to ask you if we can bring anyone we can save from intercision to the valley.»

"I need to ask my people," Toby said. "But I think they will say yes."

"Yes," Elgat agreed.

"Do you think Tom could handle a visit?" Loren said. "You said Tobias should try talking to people in the valley."

Toby looked to Elgat. She said, "Tom is angry. Free is hard. Tom sometimes hurt. Hurt Tom. Hurt others."

"We don't mind," Loren said. "Right, boys?"

It took a moment to realize I was one of the "boys." «No,» I said. «We do not mind.»

Elgat led us to the lean-to where Tom lived. He could not abide the company of the former voluntary hosts, and so lived separately from them. I could understand his discomfort. He was not inside at the moment, however. He had climbed a tree, and shared a low branch with the Hork-Bajir named Dref Fakash, who had been especially badly treated as a host and was now a _vecol_. Dref was slowly carving a pattern into the bark of the tree. Tom watched him intently. His dæmon, Delareyne, was on the ground, as any four-hooved mammal would be, and saw us first. She seemed to focus on me in particular. "Hello."

«Hello,» I said. «What are you doing?»

"I think he's drawing a _hrala_ pattern," Tom said, his voice a soft monotone. "That's what his _kalashi_ , Ghat, says he does."

"Yes," Elgat said, swinging up into the tree to study it. "Is _hrala_ shape."

Tobias settled on a branch with a view of the pattern. «Amazing how much control they have over their blades, isn't it?»

Tom made a humming noise with his lips. Delareyne looked up at me. "I want to learn about Andalites," she said. "I want to know how you fight the Yeerks. How your military works."

I might have been more flattered by this approach a year ago. But by now I had come to realize that only Tobias and Loren had ever expressed true interest in my people beyond our role in the war. There was much more to Andalites than war. Teaching Loren and Tobias about my culture in order to maintain my _hrala_ flow had reminded me of the great flourishing of our peace. I would not refuse Tom and Delareyne this request. But it made me sad in ways I had never felt before. «Of course,» I said. «I will return on my own and teach you what you wish to know.» I pointed a stalk eye at Dref. «Why do you spend your time with him? He cannot speak.»

Beside me, I saw Loren stiffen. Elgat only tilted her head, as if I had said something very odd.

"He doesn't have to speak," Tom said. "I like watching him." Indeed, he hadn't taken his eyes off Dref for our entire conversation. He seemed to have nothing more to say.

Loren and Tobias thanked Elgat for her help. I said nothing, sensing that I had angered Loren. I was proven right when we morphed and began our trip back home. She said, «Haven't I taught you anything?»

«Of course you have,» I said.

«Then why were you so surprised Tom wanted to spend time with a _vecol_?» Loren said.

I knew she did not like that word. It sounded wrong in her voice. «Why would Tom spend his time with someone who cannot engage with him fully?»

«You think Dref Fakash can't engage with people fully?» Her thought-speak voice trembled with anger. «That's what Taylor thought, you know. That she couldn't engage with people fully. Because she was a cripple. A _vecol_. That's why she sold out herself and her family to the Yeerks.»

«Taylor was weak,» I said.

«Really? You don't think any of the _vecols_ you keep penned up on your homeworld wouldn't sell out to the Yeerks if it would let them lead normal lives again? You don't think maybe it's easier for people to say no to the Yeerks when they're happy with the lives they have? The _crippled_ lives they have?»

I couldn't deny that Loren was right. According to Taylor's own story, she had become isolated after her accident, like a _vecol_. The loss of social power and influence had driven her to despair, and to the Yeerks. The burns on her body had not made her weak. Her loneliness had. «I find it hard to sympathize with this treacherous human,» I said. «But… she should not have felt that the Yeerks were her only viable choice.»

«No,» Loren said. «And I think Tom needs to learn that he has other choices, too.»

 **Rachel**

The raid on the severance chamber was only the beginning, of course. Now that we'd done that, we could finally stop those Nazi wannabe monsters from severing dæmons from homeless people.

I was worried that Jake would say no, that we needed a break after what happened last time. Not that I would have argued. I didn't get captured and tortured, so I didn't get to tell him how to feel about it. But really, I should have known better. Jake is my cousin. He wanted to kick some Yeerk butt.

So with help from Marco's mom and the Chee, we found out where the Yeerks were taking the people they captured, and started morphing in an abandoned building next to it.

"Do you think you could cut out the power in the building?" Jake asked me and Cassie. "Like you did when Taylor had us?"

I traded a look with Cassie. "We didn't do that. We thought maybe one of you figured out how to do it."

"So if you didn't," Jake said, stroking the feathers on Merlyse's fluffy white legs, "who did? The Blue Bands weren't there yet."

I shrugged. "Maybe it overloaded from when I broke the air conditioning. Or from what Taylor was doing."

Jake looked thoughtful. I wished he would stop. He'd be much better off smashing up the Darmstadt guillotines the Yeerks had in the next building over. All of us would.

"Maybe it was one of the Controllers," Bachu put in. She, Safiya, and Lourdes were here on standby to help anyone we could rescue from the compound.

I raised my eyebrows. "You really think a Peace Movement Yeerk would risk his sluggy neck to save us?"

"They risked their lives to help the voluntary hosts in the Valley escape," Bachu said.

"That doesn't mean they'd do it for _us_ ," Marco said. "We're the dreaded Andalite bandits, remember?"

The plan was pretty simple. The Chee had already opened up an underground tunnel between the basement of this building and the next. We just had to storm in, smash up the equipment, grab any prisoners, and get out. The only catch was that not all our battle morphs would fit through the tunnel. Cassie and I were morphing wolf, while Loren morphed to Hork-Bajir – Elgat Kar, at a guess. She had to crouch to get into the tunnel. Jake was out in front, since he had the most firepower right now.

Through the tunnel, into a moldy basement full of spare parts and cleaning equipment. The Chee had shown us blueprints of the building, so we knew where to find the stairs. Jake charged up, snarling.

Just like we'd expected, the place wasn't nearly as well defended as the community center. The Yeerks didn't expect a bunch of Andalites to care about a facility where they severed humans. I was right behind Jake, growling and snapping at Hork-Bajir legs, hamstringing them, while they screamed and cursed in their mish-mash language. Welts of pain from their knee blades rose up over my body, but the pain gets easier to ignore, eventually, when you know you can just morph it all away.

When we had them all down, Tobias said, «I saw one of them hit some kind of panic button and call for help. We need to clear out.»

But I was frozen. Hypnotized, I guess. With the Hork-Bajir on the ground, the Darmstadt guillotine stood in the middle of the room, two linked chambers with a gleaming silver gate in between, ready to fall and cut them off from each other. The only time I'd ever seen one before was in a picture, in Hebrew school, when we'd learned about the Holocaust.

Jake roared, charged at it, and wrecked it with his huge tiger paws.

«Hey. Hey, there. Easy,» Cassie said. «Can you tell me where your dæmon is?»

I turned around. Marco was opening doors coming off the main room. Cassie stood in front of the open doors. It was a single stall bathroom with a dirty, bearded man inside, lying limp on his side. His chest rose and fell, but his mouth didn't move. He had no dæmon.

«Hey there pal,» Marco said, at another door. «We're busting you out. Here, dude, come with me and my animal friends. We're the good aliens.»

"You – you killed them," said a cracked woman's voice. "The monsters." She wasn't severed, then. Good.

«Sure did. Now follow that tiger over there and get out of here before more monsters show up.»

Dazed, blinking, the woman followed Jake through the tunnel. She had an iridescent scarab dæmon gleaming in her matted blonde hair.

Loren walked up to the man lying in the bathroom. His eyelashes fluttered against his cheek, but he didn't move. She tilted her head and seemed to trace something in the air with her hand. Something I couldn't see – _hrala_ , I realized. She followed whatever it was across the room to a shelf with two small lockboxes on it. "There's another," she said, picking up both boxes.

Marco slammed open another door. «Oh,» he said, and picked up the person he found there. I saw his tear-streaked face loll over Marco's thick gorilla shoulder. It was a teenager. Our age.

«Let's get out of here,» Cassie said softly. We went back through the tunnel.

 _I thought this would feel better,_ Abineng thought. _Like a victory._ But we'd only gotten one person out intact.

Loren gave the lockboxes to the Chee. «I don't know what you can do for them. But… their dæmons are here.» Her thought-speech broke like she was crying, though her morph couldn't. «Will they live?»

The Chee took the man and the kid from Marco's arms. "No," Safiya said. "The cuts were not done neatly. They'll die from the shock. But we'll try to make it as easy as we can."

«You'll take her to the valley?» Jake said, looking at the woman with the scarab beetle dæmon.

"I will," Lourdes said.

Blood dripped hot into my eyes. I started demorphing. «I'll go with her.»

The other Animorphs looked at me, surprised. Except Tobias. _He expects us to do things like this,_ Abineng thought, and somewhere out in Z-space, he felt warm.

Safiya and Bachu took the victims back with them to one of their Chee dog parks. I flew as an eagle with Lourdes and the woman with the scarab dæmon, who were named Ruby and Keowe. They were covered with a hologram of a big burly backpacker so I could keep track of them from above. When we got into the cover of the national forest, Lourdes dropped the hologram and started carrying Ruby, who was weak after days in Yeerk captivity.

"Rachel," she said softly, into the planes of Lourdes's chrome arm. The tired curve of her body, her half-hooded eyes, made me realize she probably wasn't any older than twenty.

«I'm listening.»

"Lourdes told me about the war. What's going on. I guess I get it. A little. But this place I'm going now. What is it like?"

I wasn't the best person to ask about this. Tobias knew the valley way better than I did. But Tobias wasn't here, and Ruby needed an answer from a human. «It's beautiful,» I said. «The Hork-Bajir take good care of it.»

 _Not good enough,_ Abi said. _She's not a tourist going for a walk there. She's going to live there._

I tried again. «It's… I don't know. A healing place, if that's not too corny. It's where people go who've been hurt by this war. A place where they can be safe, and get better, and be with people who know what it's like. It's just that most of those people are Hork-Bajir.»

Ruby sighed and closed her eyes. Keowe crawled down from her hair and settled between her collarbones, like a jewel pendant without the chain. "Well. It's not like a had a home before this. Maybe one with aliens won't be so bad." Then her breathing evened out, and she fell asleep right in the android's arms.

«Lourdes,» I said to her privately. «She's been through hell. What can we do for her?»

"All of you in this war have been through hell," Lourdes said. "You do the same thing you all do for each other. Tell her war stories. Listen to hers. Just hang on and don't let go."

 **Cassie**

The day after our raid on the Darmstadt guillotines, five days after the disaster at the community center, I went to visit the Hork-Bajir valley after school. I like visiting the Hork-Bajir, but mostly I wanted to check on our human refugees, Tom and Ruby and the Peace Movement hosts.

But when I perched on a branch above Tom's lean-to, I saw he wasn't there. Ket Halpak saw me waiting there and said, "Tom not here. Tom with Ghat and Dref."

«Where are they? I'd like to see them.»

Ket hesitated. Then she said, "Yes. Ket know. But Tom not want to see human friends."

Jake had told me that Tom didn't want to see him anymore, after he realized we and the other humans in the valley were allies with the Peace Movement. I didn't realize that extended to all of us. «Okay,» I said. «Could you tell him I came by?»

"Ket will tell."

«Thank you, Ket. Say, can you tell me where Ruby is?»

"New human?" Ket said. "By fire pit with Meret."

«You think they want company?»

Ket flashed a Hork-Bajir smile. "With Cassie? Yes."

In Southern California, you don't really need a campfire, even when you're living out in the woods permanently, especially not when you have a nice stove the Chee brought you. The Hork-Bajir only lit them on special occasions. But humans have a deep connection to fire. It's been key to our survival for thousands upon thousands of years. So the human refugees in the valley set up a fire pit, deep and protected enough to keep everyone safe from forest fires. There were logs arranged in a diamond around it. Ruby sat on one of the logs, dressed in a sweater and leggings, Keowe sitting in her now-clean hair. She was turned with her back to the fire, watching Meret Kar gather flowers.

I demorphed behind a tree and came over to sit on the log with her. "Hi, Ruby. I'm Cassie." I waved at my dæmon on my shoulder. "This is Quincy."

She glanced at me. "Which one were you, yesterday?"

Right. She hadn't seen me as a human. I was so used to recognizing the others in their morphs I didn't think of it. "I was one of the wolves."

"Oh. Okay. Well, thanks. I thought I was gonna die in there." _Or worse,_ she didn't say.

"I wanted to check on you," I said. "See how you're doing. Have you settled in with everyone okay?"

Ruby shrugged. "There was an argument over which latrine I should use. But it's okay, I guess. Still really weird."

"Why would anyone care which latrine you use?" I said.

"That's what I said." She turned her head to watch Meret again, and when the sun hit her face I saw the barest hint of golden stubble on her face.

Quincy ruthlessly squashed the part of me that was startled by that, and the ten different questions that leaped into my mind. _She's stuck here, with these people, and they're not treating him – her right,_ he said. _Focus on that._ So I said, "Do you want me to tell them to stop hassling you?"

She shook her head. "Telling people never works. They just have to come around."

I saw Melissa join Meret, pointing out clumps of flowers to her. "What's Meret up to?" I asked.

"I think it's for someone she has a crush on. It's kinda sweet," Ruby said. "It's so strange seeing them act like this, picking flowers for a crush, after what…" She trailed off and stroked Keowe's orange-green carapace.

"Those weren't Hork-Bajir. They were Controllers. You haven't really met the Hork-Bajir yet." I smiled. "I don't know anyone yet who didn't end up liking them."

Melissa and Meret came toward the fire. "Mind if we join you?" Melissa said.

I looked to Ruby. She said, "Sure."

"Who are the flowers for, Meret?" I asked. Quincy flew over and landed on the bouquet in Meret's big clawed hands.

" _Thashet_ is private," Meret said primly, looking down at Quincy on his bed of milkvetch.

I had no idea what _thashet_ was, but I caught Meret's drift. "Sorry."

"So," Melissa said. She watched Ververet walk over her knuckles. "What happened?"

"Huh?"

"We don't get a newsletter or anything," Melissa said. "How did you end up rescuing Ruby? What was the Empire trying to do this time?"

 _So strange,_ Quincy said, looking at Melissa. _Usually we're the only ones who say "the Empire" instead of "the Yeerks."_

I looked to Ruby again. Keowe flashed his wings. "Okay," I said. "It's not, you know, a nice campfire story or anything."

Melissa rolled her eyes. Someone in the distance yelled, "Wait!" We waited. The boy, Miguel, came over, his dæmon a lizard on his shoulder. That surprised me. Miguel had been very quiet, at first. He sat on a log across from me. "I want to know what happened."

Melissa looked at him. "She doesn't know what happened to our Yeerks."

Miguel's dæmon flowed into a snake over his fingers. "I know. But. It sucks, staying out here, not knowing what's going on."

Quincy flew back to my open hand. My cheeks heated with guilt. Of course the refugees would be worried about their Yeerks. I hadn't even tried to find out what had happened to them, after they'd taken such a great risk to free their hosts. "Chee-bachu – that's Wena Shih – would be the one to know about that. Sorry."

"It's okay," Melissa said. "Just tell us what you know."

"Sure." I thought about where to start. "The Empire captured Ruby and – and the others, because they wanted to figure out a way to sever Andalites from their Guide Trees."

"Guide Tree?" Meret craned her neck forward in interest. "What is Guide Tree?"

"They're connected to trees with _hrala_ ," I said. "Like…" I gestured at the air between me and Quincy, even though I couldn't see the connection like Meret would.

"So the Andalites have, like, tree dæmons?" Melissa said.

"Or maybe we have Guide Animals," I said.

"I don't guide Miguel," his dæmon said quietly. "I'm just as lost as he is."

I shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not."

"Hork-Bajir not need guide," Meret said. "See _hrala_."

"Okay," Melissa said. "So Andalites have Guide Trees. We have Guide Animals. Hork-Bajir don't need guides, because they work with _hrala_ directly. But Yeerks don't see _hrala_. So what guide do they have?"

 _It's almost as if Melissa is avoiding the subject of what actually happened,_ Quincy observed. _Even though she insisted she wanted to know._ I just said, "I don't know. Do you, Meret?"

Meret looked up, at what seemed to me like empty air. "Some Hork-Bajir see things. Tell stories."

It seemed like she might go on, but then Bachu appeared, her hand on the neck of her holographic Chow Chow dæmon. "Melissa, Miguel, would you come with me to the yurt? I have something to discuss with you and the other Peace Movement people."

Melissa and Miguel stood up. "I guess we'll hear the rest later, huh," Melissa said.

"You should think about whether you want to," I said. "Some of our missions make good stories. You should ask Marco about the Helmacrons sometime. This one doesn't."

A heavy silence fell around the campfire after that. After a long pause, Ruby said, "The other people here. They were all voluntary Controllers. Except Tom, I guess, but I haven't met him yet. I just don't get it. Why would anyone want a Yeerk in their head?"

"Meret not know," Meret said.

"I've been a voluntary Controller," I said. "I know."

"What?" Ruby said. "But – you fight the Yeerks."

"I don't fight the Yeerks," I said. "I fight the Yeerk Empire."

"What does that mean?" Ruby said.

"Do you agree with everything the American government does?" I said. "There's a war going on in Kosovo right now. American soldiers are killing people out there. Is that your fault?"

"No," Ruby said. "But that's different."

"Why?"

"Yeerks aren't _people_."

"That's the thing," I said. "They are."

Both Meret and Ruby seemed struck by that. I stroked Quincy's back with two fingers. If Aftran were here, she'd press the point. She'd tell Ruby and Meret what it's like to be a Yeerk living under the Visserarchy, make them see the horror of it. Aftran loved rubbing people's noses in the worst of Yeerk life. She had to live with it every day, after all, and she saw no reason why anyone else should be spared from that reality. She had never spared my feelings, not ever, since the moment we met. She shouldn't have been able to win my loyalty that way. The other Animorphs spare my feelings all the time, and I'm usually grateful for it. But Aftran was the one person who never held back from me. She knew that just because I think about right and wrong all the time, just because I try to care, doesn't mean I need to be shielded. She would say it means that I shouldn't be shielded at all.

Bachu came to us from the yurt. Her face was solemn. She stood by the fire, like a camp counselor about to make an announcement. "You may need to give them some space."

"Why?" I said. "What happened?"

Bachu hesitated, looked at Ruby and Meret, then back at me. "Visser Three executed their Yeerks."

I let out a breath, then held Quincy's furry neck to my lips. I'd known in the back of my mind that this would happen. There was no way a Yeerk could help their host escape the Yeerk Pool and get away with it. But it still hurt.

I looked up at Ruby and Meret. "Their Yeerks gave their lives to help these people go free," I said quietly. "Does that clear anything up for you?"

Ruby bit her lip and cupped Keowe with her hand. Meret's face was inscrutable. I sighed. "Let them mourn, okay? You may not get it, but this is going to be hard on them. I'm going to go home now. Bachu, tell them I'll come if they want to talk about their Yeerks. I'll listen."

I walked away from the fire, letting the tears slip down my face until I didn't have tear ducts anymore.

 **Melissa**

Her name was Garmiray 779. She was born in Generation 693, late-cycle. Her first host was a Gedd, working janitorial duty on the Pool Ship. Her second host was me. She wouldn't get a third host, because now she was dead.

"How do you think they did it?' Miguel mumbled, his face pressed into his dæmon's coarse badger fur. "Dracon beam? Dehydration? Kandrona starvation?"

"Don't think about it," Robin said.

"How can I _not_ think about it?" Miguel snapped.

On the bunk they shared, Julissa was holding Jamal while he rocked against her and cried. Julie's snake dæmon coiled around the neck of Jamal's flamingo dæmon, his tongue flickering, soothing. I'd never seen a grown man cry out of pure sadness before. In the Yeerk Pool I'd seen men cry from anger or fear or hopelessness, but never sadness. My own eyes were dry. I envied Jamal, for being able to cry, for having someone to hold him while he did.

"Let's go see Elgat Kar," I blurted out. "She's good at this stuff, right?"

I spent the most time with her, but Robin went to every meeting of new-free circle, and Miguel sometimes came too. Julie had only been a couple times, and Jamal never, but they talked to Elgat too, just the two of them and her, up in the trees.

Robin nodded slowly. Miguel made a "mmm" sound of agreement into Andromeda's fur. I wasn't sure if Jamal and Julie were paying attention, but they didn't say no. "Meret is out by the campfire," I said, "if someone wants to ask her where her sister is."

At first, no one moved. Then Robin nodded at his dæmon and stood up in one firm move. He walked outside. While I waited for him to come back, I leaned my head back against the post of my bunk bed and put Ververet on my face. I felt him beat his wings against the thin skin beneath my left eye, gentle as a breath.

Robin poked his head back in. "Come on. I know where she is."

We followed him to the creek, where Elgat was shaking herself off after a bath. The moment she saw us, she said, "Human friends! What is wrong?" I guess we must have looked as bad as we felt, even to a Hork-Bajir.

We all looked at each other. I looked down at Ververet on my knuckles and said, "How do Hork-Bajir mourn?"

Elgat crouched down, bringing herself to our height, something she liked to do to help connect with us. It did help, not having to look up to see her face. "Who die?"

A silence fell. None of us wanted to say it out loud. Finally, Robin managed to say, "Our Yeerks."

Elgat's dark eyes sharpened. "Human friends free. Owe Yeerks nothing."

"We don't have to," I said. "But we want to."

"Death-song for family. Friends," Elgat said.

My throat burned and closed up. I couldn't speak. Robin said, "They _were_ our friends."

"Friends are free," Elgat said. "Friends choose friends. With Yeerks, no choice."

She was right. I didn't choose Garmiray. We were forced together, and we'd become friends anyway. Was it some kind of Stockholm syndrome? Did I make myself like her because it was better than hating the person I had to spend all my time with?

Julie said, her voice hard, "I chose. Jamal told me what it was like, having a Yeerk in his head, and I wanted it. I went with him to the Yeerk Pool and let his Yeerk's friend into my head. It wasn't what I expected, and I eventually decided I didn't want it anymore. But I don't regret it."

Elgat tilted her head. "Julie not want humans free?"

Julie folded her arms. "Did I say that?"

Miguel, surprisingly, rose to her defense. "Just because she wanted a Yeerk doesn't mean she wants the Yeerks to take over the Earth!"

"Is what Yeerk want," Elgat said.

"It's not what all of them want," Robin said. "It's not what Derane wanted."

"Robin Yeerk still part of Yeerks. Obey Vissers. Help Vissers hurt humans, Hork-Bajir. Yeerks enemies, not friends. Hard for some new-frees to remember. Yeerk know head, know thoughts, know stories, like friend. But Yeerk not friend."

I could hear a distant buzzing in my ears, slowly drowning out the rest of the world. Elgat _was_ talking about Stockholm syndrome. And she could be right. Garmiray had known me, known everything about me, she could have used that to say exactly the right things to make me think of her as a friend, and how could I ever know if it had been real when she could manipulate me down to my bones and all I'd known about her was what she'd told me?

 _Breathe, Melissa,_ Ververet said. _Breathe, you're not breathing –_

"That's enough," Wena Shih said. I blinked, and the Chee was there, standing between us and Elgat, her dæmon's ears pricked forward. "I see it was a mistake to leave you alone after giving you such a shock. Elgat, you are not helping these people. You are hurting them to no purpose. Leave them be until you can actually help them."

"Elgat can help new-frees," Elgat said.

"You are very good at helping Hork-Bajir new-frees, Elgat," Wena said. "You've been very good with Tom, too. But these new-frees, you don't know how to help."

Elgat looked at us and Wena for a long minute. Then she leapt up into a tree and swung away.

Wena said, "Let's go back to the yurt, shall we?"

None of us could think of anything better to do, so we did. When we were all inside, Wena said, "I was a voluntary host too."

"But you're a robot," I said.

"'Android' is more accurate," Wena said. "But yes. That means I was able to wire Aftran into my neural circuitry such that she could access my sensory and motor functions if I allowed it. I chose to do it because I didn't know what Yeerks were like, and I wanted to learn."

 _It was different for her, then,_ Ververet thought. _She shared her life and her body, but not her thoughts, memories, or feelings. She could draw the line somewhere. Less messy._

Robin was lying on his bunk, Nessarey sprawled over his torso. "You learn a lot, don't you?"

"Yes," Wena said. "I did. And I am thousands of years old, and had thought there was not much left for me to learn on this planet."

"That was one of the reasons I decided to pair up with a Yeerk," Julie said quietly, stroking Jamal's hair. "You know, besides the free healthcare."

Robin laughed. "I was involuntary to start with, but I gotta admit, that was a perk. Finally got to get some dental work done."

"And Jamal got permanent housing and help with some of his compulsive behaviors," Julie said. "But hell, I was a social worker. And you try real hard to work on your empathy, you know, so you can connect with people in all kinds of situations. And still there's always so much you're never gonna get, because you'll never really know what it's like to be another person. But I realized, after Jamal and Essak told me about them, you know who really does know what it's like to be different people? A Yeerk. A Yeerk could show me, from the _inside._ And you know what? She did. Lord, she did." Julie's dæmon, Enther, rubbed his head below her eyes, wiping the film of tears away.

Jamal's dæmon, Rois, said quietly, "I miss Essak. Sometimes I wish I hadn't run away. Then they'd be alive. Maybe things would be less hard."

I agreed, silently, but then I heard Miguel say "mmm" and I let myself nod. I could never admit that outside of the yurt, where the Hork-Bajir and Ruby and Tom could see, but in here, it was allowed.

Robin said, staring up at the bottom of the top bunk of his bed, "I feel so guilty about running away. I was the vice principal at the elementary school. Derane and I had to recruit kids of important people, and it made us sick, but at least we put them with Peace Movement Yeerks, who'd make it as easy for them as they could. Now that I'm gone, and Derane's dead, they've probably put a loyal Yeerk in my place. Someone who'll do who-knows-what to those kids. If I'd just sucked it up – stayed with Derane – " He shook his head and folded his arms around Nessarey.

"Aftran isn't dead," Wena said, "so I know it isn't the same. But still. I often imagine what she would say, when I'm in certain situations. I know she would have some kind of comment, and I can try to imagine it, but it's not the same. And I know my life is missing something because she's not there to experience it with me."

"We've got to do something," I said suddenly. "Like a funeral, a memorial, something. We don't need the Hork-Bajir's help. We'll go out to the edge of the valley and – and – "

"I can carve a gravestone for you," Wena said. "Or a memorial plaque. Whatever you like."

We climbed up past the tree line on the eastern side of the valley, to a rock shelf covered in tangled brush. Wena effortlessly lifted a large flat rock and settled it against the stone face. She waited for us to decide what the plaque should say. We talked about it for a long time, as the sun set behind our backs, casting our shadows over the stone.

When we decided, Wena dropped her hologram. Her dæmon disappeared. She was a chrome, vaguely dog-like thing, not remotely human. She extended a finger and rotated it like a drill. When she was done, this is what the plaque said.

THESE YEERKS GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR HUMAN FREEDOM

Essak 2877 secondary of the Hett Simplat pool

Derane 901 of the Culat Hesh pool

Garmiray 779 of the Hett Simplat pool

Odret 1129 of the Culat Hesh pool

Efflit 812 of the Sulp Niar pool

WE SWIM IN THE WAKE OF THEIR MEMORY


End file.
